It's not much, but its mine.

I haven't spent much time on the plot lately, and the time I have spent there, or dealing with seedlings has mostly been categorised by fail. French beans not germinated, my tomato plants do not seem to have grown at all since I potted them on last time and are certainly not developing trusses, my leeks, parsnip and savoy cabbage seedlings have just flopped over. Sweetcorn look terminal. Lettuce, spring onions, chives: eaten by slugs. Courgette, oh my god. In fact, if these were the only things I were growing I would pack up. Because frankly, given the amount of seeds I have sown, that is not a good average. But not all is lost. Carrots and beetroot appear to be ok. Potatoes, 4 out of 5 seeds so far. Peas, excellent, runner beans, ok (I think). And today, I brought my first veg home from the plot. Not more than a paper bag full of spinach leaves, true, but still. For all that sweating, they're going to taste pretty sweet.

The plot is still a mess. I've been hacking back couch grass all the time, and pulling up bindweed and marestail. But, no matter what I do, while the beds are still covered with black weed suppressant, held down with planks, its going to look terrible. I try not to think about it, but its a bit discouraging when I see so many plots looking so up together. I know I've achieved a lot so far, but I guess I want it to just look nice. In an effort to tidy up a bit thats been troubling me for ages, where a hose pipe was hidden by (I didn't know) a bit of carpet covered by a thick layer of couchgrass, I thought I'd pull it out. Oh, my god. Ugh, I spent the twenty minutes it took to pull this mess out with the fear that rats were going to jump out on me. They didn't. But still. And now I have to get rid of it.

A free pile of crap with your plot!

Whilst doing this, one of the West Indian men who allotments a few plots down came over for a chat, no doubt attracted by my swearing at the pieces of hose I was hacking out of the ground. He is fairly deaf, I realise, and his strong accent is a bit much for me, so we often don't talk for long. At ten minutes, today was our longest talk. Long enough, to realise that the age and gender divide is alive and well on our corner of the allotments. 

He couldn't believe how much I had done 'all by myself'. Don't you have a husband? He wanted to know. I didn't think he wanted to hear my domestic dramas, and how could I really explain, but I just said, well, I want to do it myself. Digging is a man's job, he explained (huzzah for no-dig gardening), you should get a man to help you. I smile at this. No, really, I say, I'm capable. Its not right, he said. I am a big strong girl, I tell him, its fine. I think about how I made all my raised beds and a bloody bench alone, out of scrap and completely clueless, Dug into rock hard clay, shovelled almost two tonnes of topsoil and schlepped the contents of two unrotted compost bins. I nearly told him all of this. But then I realised that, there was no point. I'm not going to inflict a discussion on gender politics to a pleasant, friendly octogenarian and so what if his ideas are not the same as mine, really? He's just trying to help me. And frankly, would he have heard me. Still, had to smile at his parting shot. 'No, you're doing a good job, for a lady.' I didn't even think, until now, about saying, slowly and at the top of my voice, 'and you're doing a bang up job for a pensioner!'. Maybe I'm growing up.