Sleep restless, anxiety dreams, and if there wasn’t enough to be concerned about I am worrying about our baby beans and peas.
It is often like this in spring. The responsibility, it comes with the shorter nights and longer light, maybe I have more time on my hands. I have saved two hours a day on travelling and I only work a few miles’ walk from home. This extra time has now become a trip to the plot, or perhaps pottering on the terrace. A more intimate gardening relationship cemented in the spring mornings. Deepened, more dependent.
The seedling trays have been hardened off and transplanted. Courgettes, corn, bean and pea top-ups, too (from deep root trainers with a peat-free compost). So, now I lie awake worrying about predators. My babies are on their own, surrounded by birds and slugs and snails.
It won’t last long, they’ll only need me until they can climb their poles. Free, adult, on their own. Until then, I feed, I weed, I water, I come as often as I can. I have bought an organic slug gel – organic pellets are impossible to find – I don’t much like it, but I may need an armoury on my side. The pea shoots are barely adolescent, lolling around as yet. Their enemies will have to get past me. I know it is irrational, likely stuff half-buried in my past. But I am all they have at the moment. Or so I tell myself.
Last year I sowed a nursery row of Gold of Bacau beans (creamy, prolific, from seed savers out of Romania, hard to find). They were bright greeny-yellow, jolly, two-leafed and 2in high, until resident pigeons cropped along them like kids eating corn.
So I visit early most mornings, pop in of an evening, whisper thoughts of encouragement. Like children when they leave home, they soon won’t need me any more.
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