First day this year at Plot 71. I get a steady hour in, mid-morning. Chilly, and still, but not quite frosty. I meet nobody, apart from the woman from the plot opposite, who judging from the clipboard in her hand as she passes breezily by, and the fact that I don’t see her on her actual plot, is acting in her capacity as committee member- an inspection of some sort, no doubt.
First observation of the year: something has been burrowing into the chippings that make up the pathways. What- squirrels? Rabbits? Moles? Dogs? Hedgehogs, I decide, on the basis of no knowledge whatsoever. I like hedgehogs though, and am vaguely aware that they may be classified as somehow endangered, so am pleased to think of myself as, however inadvertently, having facilitated the hibernation of one or several of the local population. Even if the unevenness underfoot occasioned by their unconfirmed seasonal home-making activity causes me to turn over on my dodgy left ankle during my initial royal walkabout of the plot, and consequently to interrupt the peace and birdsong with a sudden and most unceremonious yell- ‘Ah, Fuck!’.
After brief recuperation in the general shed area it is time to embark on the first jobs of the year. I keep to what I know- just looking to get my hand in. Put out some birdseed on the table (pleasingly, the yellow plastic plate the seed goes on had remained in place, held there by the two lengths of metal wire I’d entangled around it on the one brief visit over Christmas). A light dig over the one of the four small rectangular plots that is nearest to the compost bin, getting rid of whatever hardy weeds had survived the winter- and unearthing among them a treasure, in the form of the last surviving onion of the 2018 crop. Tiny, more like a spring onion really. But healthy-looking.
Then in the last twenty minutes I get ambitious. Start to hack away at the curvy, brick-bordered area to the side of the compost bin, to date uncultivated, which I fondly imagine as possibly half pond, half mid-size vegetable patch. The dead winter grass comes away surprisingly easily, and I’m soon able to survey a newly-created nearly-bald-patch approximately two yards square. Although actually the shape isn’t a square, it’s closer to a map of the Iberian Peninsula.
I’m tempted to forge onwards with the big fork into further virgin territory- northern Italy, perhaps. But I’ve got to get home and drive Frankie to Heald Green, where his under 15 football team are due to face the might of Cheadle and Gatley Scirocco in a 1PM kick-off. So I pick up the last onion of 2018 from its resting place atop the green Stockport Council wheelie bin which serves as a water butt, and head back to the Toyota Aygo for the thirty-second drive home.
Later that afternoon the tiny onion plays a walk-on part in Charlotte’s slow cooker vegetable curry. And Frankie’s team, similarly outsized within a heated and time-limited environment, emerge on the wrong side of a 2-8 scoreline, but show valiance worthy of any hardwearing root vegetable, especially during a second half which they actually win 2-1. Altogether, a bright enough start.
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