A laid back Sunday in spring

Having had a leisurely breakfast in bed of poached eggs on toast whilst chatting about all things garden and allotment related we got up rather late. There was no plan for the day but in the morning we took a lot of our seedlings and plants out of the greenhouse and conservatory to harden off a bit, get some fresh air around their leaves and benefit fully from the spring sunlight. It was a little bit on the cool side but the sunshine was beautiful.

While Jacqueline started to prepare dinner, I sowed a few seeds. Second batches of celeriac and cauliflower were started. I also watered any of the seedlings that needed it and generally pottered around the garden in Sunday mode.

Next I made a quick trip to the allotment to dig a few parsnips and pick some purple sprouting broccoli to go with our lunch. There’s not much else up there now but the parsnips are still very good.

Lunch was delicious! A feta cheese, spinach, and pine nut pie with a crispy filo pastry top, roast potatoes, carrots and the fresh vegetables from the allotment of course. There was beer and wine too. Well it is the weekend.

After lunch, armed with a flask of tea and some hot cross buns we headed back to the allotment. While Jacqueline set about clearing and weeding what was a brassica bed last year I tried my best to extricate a row of inherited Jerusalem artichokes from a particularly clayey part of Jacqueline’s cut flower patch. Jacqueline only took this plot on in the autumn of last year but she has transformed it from a very weedy, disorganised, uncared for plot into something that looks much more loved and productive already. I may have helped a bit.

We have quite a pile of weeds and various rubbish that was left on the new plot to get rid of. So, as we’ve had a few dry days, I decided to light a bonfire. I know the subject of fires on allotments can be contentious and that they are not allowed on some sites, but we are allowed them and I have to say I love a bonfire. An allotment would hardly be an allotment if you couldn’t have a fire once in a while as far as I’m concerned. The smell of burning and the sight of smoke spiraling gently skyward is as much a part of allotment life as cauliflowers, cucumbers and conversations about the pros and cons of the no-dig method.

With the bonfire lit and smouldering sedately we decided to break for our tea and buns. It was so good to just sit and relax, chat with a couple of our allotment neighbours and listen to the birds for a while. We were lucky enough to hear a woodpecker in the trees nearby. The sun shone and the sky was blue from horizon to horizon.

Tea in one hand, bun in the other, we sat on the edge of our allotment and on the edge of a new season. It felt good to be there. It felt good to be alive.

Suitably refreshed we returned to our respective tasks. Jacqueline, at one end of the plot, weeding quietly and me, with a little bit of huffing and puffing, artichoke extracting at the other end. When we are gardening together we sometimes don’t speak for quite long periods of time and are often some distance apart yet somehow we rarely feel closer.

Soon the late afternoon began to grow cold and we decided to call it a day. We packed up our tools and with the last red cabbage from the brassica bed and a good sized bunch of daffodils from the cut flower patch we headed home.

The sun glowed bright orange from behind the bare branches of the trees, promising more of the same for tomorrow.

March Jobs

Grow celeriac

Grow cauliflower

Cut flower patch