Allotment news
Phew! What a relief it was when we handed back our allotment keys. It turns out I wasn’t cut out for allotment life after all. I had the time but not the desire and my fellow owner had the enthusiasm but not the time.
This is where, when it comes to it, I choose to spend my time when I want to be outdoors.
Our back garden
My co-owner has a full-time job and a two year old daughter. I have a tendency to sit about not doing much and prefer to do that in my own garden rather than toil on the allotment.
Weeds
We never got on top of the bindweed and couch grass. Probably because we didn’t go often enough. Apparently an allotment in summer needs 3/4 visits of hard work and watering per week, not one visit every 3/4 weeks. Goodness me.
Luckily my garden is so closely planted that weeds aren’t a problem.
Very close planting to deter weeds
My visits had been popping to the plot, gazing in horror at the devastation, pulling up a shrivelled radish and quickly popping home again.
Guilt
The guilt at my reluctance to get a grip haunted me daily like a looming exam. It was a decision waiting to be made and I just put it off and hoped it would go away.
So when we got the letter saying we had failed the Council inspection we didn’t hesitate to say “Let it go, let it go”. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders and I could sit here with a clear conscience.
Where I choose to be in all weathers
The list of things I ought to be doing and am not doing is already quite long so now I could cross weeding off that list. (Just leaves learning to cook, doing some Pilates, phoning my Mum, writing a regular blog, reducing my Twitter addiction, etc etc)
So what is the moral of this story?
Well, it could be that however much you wish you were a certain kind of person, if you are in reality not that kind of person, then the truth will out. Necessities apart, we do what we want to do. We vote with our feet. Although I fancied the rugged outdoor life in theory, in practice I prefer the “popping out the back door for a bit of a potter around” life.
