Tuesday, 22 May 2018

Be careful what you wish for - Juliet shall have her plot

Plot A1
I applied for an allotment over three years ago.  When I say "applied" I mean I put my name down on the list and regularly contacted the lady from the allotment committee regularly for over three years.  I think I was number 18 on the list at that point.  In Summer 2017 she told me that I would be getting an allotment "before the end of the year".  She wasn't far off, I got my plot in January 2018. "There are people before you" she said "but they're not as persistent as you are and I have had to chase them".  Tenacity paid off.

I have no idea why I wanted a plot, I just knew that I did.  I would walk past the allotment every day for almost seven years on my daily dog walk.  This was a club I wanted to join because it was a challenge, albeit low risk, but nonetheless a challenge. I am the girl whose gardening skills extended to no more than watering supermarket herbs on the kitchen windowsill and filling a few pots with lobelia and bizzy lizzies in the summer, only for them to be massacred by slugs or wither and die on my north-facing patch.

On Sunday 7th January I met the allotment lady who shall now be known as "AL" for the first time.  It was sub-zero cold and frosty albeit a relatively sunny morning when I entered the secret garden.  I was given the choice of two plots.  The first being a huge patch of land, overgrown with weeds, shrubs and debris. My heart sank.  I could never tackle this beast on my own.  I would have needed to hire a landscaper for a start and, money wise and reputation wise, that was never going to happen.  Doing this plot alone might have been possible but I think it would have killed me.  That is not the ethos of allotmenting -  landscaping and death although it did have a nice big shed on it and for a moment I fantasised about painting and decorating it with tat.  Luckily the next plot  I was shown was a section of a larger plot that had already been divided up.  This was much much better.  Manageable, some raised beds there already that were suitably decaying and a little green shed that was on its last legs.  Yes!  Plot A1.  Don't mind if I do.


Wondering which is my plot



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