I'd hatched a plan to get up to the allotment before dark yesterday, with the help of a bit of flex and a conveniently nearby agile desk. It worked - just. I managed to escape my desk as 16.12pm - just minutes before sunset, and with almost 40 minutes of civil twilight stretching out ahead of me.
My allotment was clearly in use. Small animal trails criss-crossed my crooked patch, worn through the tall grass. On the chipboard bits I'd put down to suppress weeds, there was a tangle of paw prints, which I squinted at in the gloaming, attempting to resurrect my memories of spotter's guides from my youth. Something had dug a small, tidy hole in the bean bed, probably chasing a tasty leatherjacket. Badger, Fox? A bit of both, probably. Plus a side-helping of allotment cat(s).
I shed my rucksack, laptop, jacket, coat etc into a rough heap on a cleaner bit of chipboard (the animals clearly had favourites) and suffered the usual problem when breaking ground; where on earth to start? In the end, I went for the parsnip bed, heading uphill, breaking a bit more ground. Aiming for 2m² in the scrap of twilight before it became to dark to see the fork beneath my feet. N.B. My parsnips had failed so that bed is pretty much empty.
Almost immediately, through the couch grass, I hit a thing, a solid, rooty thing. After a bit of struggling it resolved into huge, pale knobbly roots, more forked and weird than parsnips. A sniff revealed them to be horseradish - another gift from the allotment's previous occupants.
It was getting too dark to do anything meaningful, so I wiggled my spade and fork back into the soil. Across the allotment, on the broad central grass path next to the water trough, a handsome Dog Fox was sat, looking at me. A thin moon lit the white on his ruff and chest as we exchanged stares. Then I started talking to him, because what else should you do when you're surprised by a fox at twilight?
A bare half hour's work, but the soil felt good. Ripping out the couch grass is dropping my soil level, though. I need to start building it up again, and for that I need a composter. I'd like to go big and wooden for the sake of the allotment aesthetic but the classic dalek undeniably makes compost faster. Neither will go very fast without wet kitchen waste. The previous occupants just ended up piling black plastic bags of green waste in a corner of the allotment, which are now decaying and grassed over. But that's a problem for another day.
I took a few of the less threatening horseradish roots home in a jacket although I left it for this evening as preparing horseradish sounds a little challenging. Although, Bloody Marys with fresh horseradish on Friday does sound like a bloody good idea.
My allotment was clearly in use. Small animal trails criss-crossed my crooked patch, worn through the tall grass. On the chipboard bits I'd put down to suppress weeds, there was a tangle of paw prints, which I squinted at in the gloaming, attempting to resurrect my memories of spotter's guides from my youth. Something had dug a small, tidy hole in the bean bed, probably chasing a tasty leatherjacket. Badger, Fox? A bit of both, probably. Plus a side-helping of allotment cat(s).
I shed my rucksack, laptop, jacket, coat etc into a rough heap on a cleaner bit of chipboard (the animals clearly had favourites) and suffered the usual problem when breaking ground; where on earth to start? In the end, I went for the parsnip bed, heading uphill, breaking a bit more ground. Aiming for 2m² in the scrap of twilight before it became to dark to see the fork beneath my feet. N.B. My parsnips had failed so that bed is pretty much empty.
Almost immediately, through the couch grass, I hit a thing, a solid, rooty thing. After a bit of struggling it resolved into huge, pale knobbly roots, more forked and weird than parsnips. A sniff revealed them to be horseradish - another gift from the allotment's previous occupants.
It was getting too dark to do anything meaningful, so I wiggled my spade and fork back into the soil. Across the allotment, on the broad central grass path next to the water trough, a handsome Dog Fox was sat, looking at me. A thin moon lit the white on his ruff and chest as we exchanged stares. Then I started talking to him, because what else should you do when you're surprised by a fox at twilight?
A bare half hour's work, but the soil felt good. Ripping out the couch grass is dropping my soil level, though. I need to start building it up again, and for that I need a composter. I'd like to go big and wooden for the sake of the allotment aesthetic but the classic dalek undeniably makes compost faster. Neither will go very fast without wet kitchen waste. The previous occupants just ended up piling black plastic bags of green waste in a corner of the allotment, which are now decaying and grassed over. But that's a problem for another day.
I took a few of the less threatening horseradish roots home in a jacket although I left it for this evening as preparing horseradish sounds a little challenging. Although, Bloody Marys with fresh horseradish on Friday does sound like a bloody good idea.
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