Wednesday, 24th October, 2001

It's not only me who's a bit out of sorts with October this year.   Up in the allotment yesterday, I was clearing and digging; the kids "explored Africa on a raft", manfully "paddling" up the Limpopo (along the main path) on a wooden pub table top with a couple of sticks. We stopped for a moment - something was wrong.   Blackbirds sitting in the tops of the bramble bushes, singing their springtime hearts out.   In October?

The sycamores and the horse chestnuts have a touch of colour round the edges, and a couple of maples have turned.   But the other trees are green.   There's a bit of leaf fall with the rain and the wind of the last few days, but it is not a "proper" autumn.   Complaining when the weather's bad, and now that it's unseasonably warm - I must have been a farmer in a past life.

Peasant blood in my veins flows strong at harvest time though - going around our plots picking the first Romanesco and curly green kale, lifting the first of the salsify and scorzonera, a couple of magnificent swedes, and the last of the turnips.   A good supper tonight.

Made a fish pie; smoked cod and kale go superbly well together under a mash of our own potatoes.   Romanesco produces beautifully whorled flowerets, of a gentle spring green - and a fresh delicate flavour unmatched by any cauliflower or broccoli I've ever had;  boiled lightly with a slight drizzle of olive oil.

That was yesterday.   Now the kids are back at their mum's house, I'll try the salsify and scorzonera discreetly.   Can't find any but a simple recipe - scrub them, cut into two inch lengths, and boil for 25 minutes in water with a little lemon juice added; squeeze off the skins and serve with melted butter and chopped parsley.   Verdict.   Enjoyable enough, and a pleasant enough flavour to encourage me to try and find more interesting ways.

Went over to York tonight - standing at the bus stop under a crystal clear autumn sky, my eyes and body, mt blood, tell me it should be a frosty evening.   God knows we could be doing with it to kill off the clouds of whitefly infesting all the brassica beds in everybody's allotments.   There's not a hint of a frosty nip though - it is so mild I have my coat slung over my shoulder.

Thursday, 25th October, 2001

That's more like it - a cold wind blustering down from the high Pennines.   No confused blackbirds today! There's a bit more autumnal colour to the trees, and a few bare patches.   Leaves have fallen thick enough to rustle under my wellies.

I went up the hill for the next bit of digging.   Few tasks give me as much pleasure.   The simple rhythm of digging a three spit furrow.   Dig the middle spit, and on to the last row.  dig the left, and turn into the middle.  dig the right, and lean against the left.  Back a step, and do it again.   Slow and steady, don't lift, just turn the sod.   Keep going - and take a break well before your back tells you to.   Minimum effort, lots of time to think.

Best of all, get your hands IN to the soil, good and grubby.   Remove the perennial weeds and their roots - the couch grass, docks, creeping thistles and dandelions.   Get your fingers in deep, pull every last bit of weed.   It is perhaps the only time I get right close to the soil to see and feel its health.   Protect the worms, expose slug eggs to the frost, chuck leather jackets over the fence, squash the caterpillars hibernating.

And in a couple of hours, I've got a 15 foot length of bed turned into two neat furrows, ready for the frost to do its work.

I'm old enough to remember horse-drawn ploughing competitions in Aberdeenshire in the 50s and 60s - and the skill and pride which went into a man drawing straight furrow after straight furrow across a green turf.   I remember the black-headed gulls, following the plough.  They were then just starting to colonise inland.   And above all, I remember the call of the peesies, the lapwings, flocks of them bobbing up and down in the new cut clods.  

That simple rhythm of digging a furrow - it's good for the memory, for the soul.   Years ago, as a student, I worked on a local Aberdeenshire estate in the walled vegetable gardens through the summer.   Bill, the permanent gardener, used to say that digging was good for the body too - kept it supple, and nothing better than a couple of hours digging to chase away a cold.   Thirty years later, I believe him!

Friday, October 26th, 2001

Digging heals the soul ------ and sometimes the gardener's soul needs a bit of tender loving care!

There's an elderly Polish gentleman with a half plot - it lies half way between my two half plots.   I hardly ever see him - he seems to come in occasionally, plant a few seeds, come back a few months later and have a magnificent crop to show for his absence.   Far and away the best producing plot on the site - and good luck to his green fingers.   At eighty years old, you deserve a few breaks.

Am I jealous?   Envious?   No, not at all!   BUT, and this is a big BUT, - I saw his pile of discarded carrots.   Not a big pile, and I could see why they were discarded - split, forked, twisted and slug eaten roots.   His rubbish --- and the smallest he was throwing away was ten times the size of mine, AND it was free of any carrot fly infestation.

I wouldn't mind, but I had just dug up my carrots in final disgust - puny two inch "wonders", inedible, unusable, rotten to the core with carrot fly.

He had sown his seed and left them for a few months.   Me?   I had pampered my first sowing; I'd even bought a length of fleece and constructed a hooped shelter for my four eight-foot rows of carrots.   Sure enough, there wasn't a carrot fly to be seen on my crop.   A pity then that one single solitary seed germinated and produced one single solitary carrot.

My second sowing germinated well; three rows of carrots, of which we have eaten ----- six!   All the rest fell to carrot fly!   How does he do it?

Sunday, October 28th, 2001

Such a clean and clear sunny day today, with a proper October nip in the air.

The girls and I were up in the allotment by 9.30 this morning - far too early for a Sunday, but we were rewarded when our resident fox stirred herself lazily from the plot next door and sauntered off into the brush.   She had been sunning herself - taking a bit of a breather after her cubs had moved on, perhaps.

We were able to follow her through to the back plots, and the wild weed infested stretch.   Now though she looked ill and bedraggled; we hope we're wrong, but it's a hard life being an urban fox.

The vixen who had her den in the south of the site when we first took on an allotment two years ago died last winter.   She'd been good to have around - no rabbit damage for a start!

The allotment crowd were pleased to see the den taken over by a young vixen in the spring - and she raised a set of cubs.   People living around the site would leave food out for them, and enjoy the sight of fox and cubs playing out on the park at night.

However, kids were again breaking into the site with dogs.   My first sight of our new vixen was in March.   I was busy digging, as dusk fell; I'd heard dogs out in the park, but that's not unusual.   Suddenly SHE popped her head out of the brambles about ten feet from me.   I froze, she watched - for an age.   And she loped out of the bramble patch, within three or four feet of me, on her way to the hedge.   Sleek, red, and apparently uncaring of me.   Then I heard dogs lumbering their way through the brush a hundred yards away - neither they nor their child "masters" expected a yelling spade-brandishing madman to charge them!

"They" came back several times in the summer, rearranging our hoses to try and flood the fox family out of their den

She wasn't looking in good shape this morning - I hope she's not been poisoned.   She and her cubs had a rare old time feeding off my main crop potatoes;  we lost two thirds of that crop - dug up, half chewed and left to rot.   Better our small loss, says he with a resignation he didn't feel at the time, than the rabbit losses throughout the site, and the loss of the slinky, silky beauty of the fox herself.

The girls got on with clearing and digging one of their plots - and did a great job.   I meanwhile was clearing up the herb bed.   You live and learn.

I'd been picking up these little pots of herbs in the garden centre - that tastes nice, that sounds nice.   And the plants were so small, I'd just pop them in to the herb bed.   Looked thin and scrawny for six weeks, and nice and well-tended for three weeks.   A year later however, the sage, lemon balm and mint were taking over.   Next time I plant a herb bed, I'll read up on the plants BEFORE I put them in, rather than after and end up lifting them and moving them.

Now I have two beds - a tame herb bed, and a rampant bed; let the sage and the mint family spread as much as they like, and may the best herb win!

Monday, 29th October, 2001

It's only now my peasant blood boils with indignation - now the clocks have gone back an hour, I can't get up to the allotment for a wee while after I return from work.   Not that I did that very often - but I don't have the choice any more.   Winter is closing in.  

It wouldn't be so bad, but the council tractor usually delivers several loads of horse manure before the schools' mid-term break.   It has not arrived yet - how am I going to make sure that I get what I need for both my plots?