A Sunday afternoon was spent allotmenting - is that even a word?! I've decided that it is now.
Given that I had eagerly planted some seeds in pots weeks ago, and the fact that they were quickly outgrowing the pots and soon to die; today's day at the allotment focused on planting. The exciting bit in my opinion.
Again in my head the allotment looked much better than it did in reality. There was much to do. So, Jerica decided to rope in some child labour - in the form of Joel's little brother, Elliot.
It being half-term and away from teaching teens, I had forgotten that teenagers have an extremely short attention span. Or as I termed it on the day 'you've got the attention span of a...(pause for approx 10secs) a nit'. In the space of an hour or so Elliot had assisted in at least four separate tasks. This was quite amusing really. His help was welcomed nevertheless.
Day 3 also marks the day in which we met our neighbour. Our neighbour shall be referred to as anon - not to withhold his identity for legal reasons, but simply because me being me did not think to ask his name. As you'd expect our neighbour is a retired, old man - a stereotypical allotment owner.
In meeting our neighbour, we discovered the legacy of Reg. Reg was the previous keeper of our plot. He had kept the plot for 30 years...no pressure then :/ Anon told us of how beautiful plot 393 had been. We also learnt that carpet was apparently the norm - it keeps weeds down. I stand by our decision to rip the lot up, carpet outdoors = wrong.
Reg had given up the plot back in March, and Anon couldn't understand why the council had taken so long in offering the plot to us. I find it difficult to believe that Reg had turned all the beds over in March, unless the weeds had been involved in some kind of monster genetic modification in the three month window.
We made friends with Anon, and obviously he approved of us as loaned us a rake.
A successful day was had and we made good progress, turning over a bed and planting all the seedlings to avoid any causalities. We rewarded ourselves with a top notch Coop lunch and an ice-lolly.
I guess we shall allotment in the legacy of Reg and his fruit bushes.
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