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I can’t write about anything other than the allotment. Not a shop or a bread board or a country or a cafe quite invades me like the bike ride to a nondescript set of gates opening out onto a swathe of plots containing sunflowers, dwarf French beans, plush lavender, men. There are quite a number of men here, red-faced, brown-ankled, wrists the colour of Marmite. Their shirts flap open, all C&A and to the elbow, long shorts, dusty sandals.
There are the usual suspects: my elegant, white-haired neighbour bending down behind her hollyhocks. She wears nifty three quarter length slacks that show off her malt-coloured calves and a pair of shoes in deep olive that seem too good for gardening. I wear jeans with the bottom hanging off, ripped in an accident to do with a door knob. I wear filthy shoes, a kind of ‘gardening white’. There is no point appearing jaunty or fashionable here, but it is nice to be relatively laundered. A hat is important and sunglasses which we take off in order to establish eye contact.
Sometimes I don’t want to be sociable. There is always a moment when I need to feel free to go. It could be after an hour, or after some sun and a nice conversation. I might leave with a collection of things: baby carrots thinned to make room for more mature, upstanding carrots, a handful of flowering thyme, stalks of pungent mint. Everything is dusky with soil, my pockets contain soil, my rucksack is sandy with soil, my fingernails etc. Or sometimes it is enough that I can stand in my windowless greenhouse and smell the tomato plants and look at the way the onions have collapsed into thick green ropes.
The allotment is in a suburb of London. It runs beside the train tracks and twice an hour the train hoots by. This is typical apparently because the men who worked on the railroad needed somewhere to grow vegetables, to feed themselves. This is why allotments tend to run along rail tracks.
This is looking like my last growing season here and my allotment is still a disgrace, it never made it into one of those amazing, potager-type plots, I never got the paths right, I never eradicated the bindweed, I still have a rat under my shed. Or whatever it is. Creeping buttercup, weed seeds, blackcurrants that got eaten as soon as they ripened, a dead bird. But there is something about being hailed by a late middle-aged man, and him saying, I was just going! as I get off my bike, my jumper snagged by blackberry thorns, knowing he wouldn’t now leave for a bit because who can resist a bit of a chat about radishes, about his trip to Rye? The place he always goes. I once gave him a pot of cyclamen as a thank you for all the tomatoes, but he refused saying his wife would think he was having an affair.
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Anyway, it is one of those magical places that is also ordinary. There were so many photos I wanted to put into this post, but I couldn’t find one that captured the feeling of standing in the midst of it all one afternoon and thinking, I made that. I don’t even remember putting it into the ground, but it has naturalised and now doesn’t need me anymore. Doesn’t even need watering. I quite like the one of the lettuce and the camera bag though, and I can remember the smell of the sweet peas I brought home and couldn’t find a vase big enough for.
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Beautiful xxxxx
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Thank you dal x
You write so beautifully and it’s always a delight to read your posts. Thank you.
You are very kind to say so, thank you. x
Like a breath of fresh air!
Thank you so much xx
Paints a beautiful picture of a British allotment and certainly places you in time with the C&A comment! Certainly different from Hillcrest Drive! X
Thank you, Elizabeth – yes quite a change from the Hollywood Hills:) Hope you are both well xxx
I love this Sophie! I’m going to be singing my allotment Eden song at the solstice there tonight and also for the 90th birthday of the man who inspired its existence. He still does carpentry when needed there. Ruby and I are now going to Cornwall for the weekend to stay with Tim – we will be in Nettlecombe anyway. She’s just finished A levels and went to the solstice at Stonehenge this morning – I think! Hope there were some Druids.
Hope you’re well and now things are freer maybe we can meet. It’s my birthday next Friday and I’m thinking I might have a little drinks in the park or at home if you’re around.
Lots of love Becky xxx
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Thanks, Becky xx
So wonderful, so you, Sophie – witty and wistful and wise. I’m going to mss your allotment too even though I’ve never actually visited it, and the cast of characters attached to your stories, so can you say a thank you to your patch of ground from me? xx
Thanks lovely xxx
Thank you Sophie for such a nice smooth, elegant, well written story. I posted it on FB for all my friends who have been busy tending their gardens. I think they will read it with a smile of satisfaction and acknowledgement of the descriptions you gave of the clothes they too are wearing…. Here are a few pics from one of those friends, Steven Smith on FB; he and his family live in Sonoma County, Calif., a most beautiful location for growing… The first is the Alabama Pipeline Swallowtail, the second is his Nectarine tree in full production, the next two are his Zinia coming to bloom, and then blooming…
Have a blessed summer. Michael D 
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Thank you, Michael.
Beautiful sweet peas, so pleased you decided to use this photo xx
Thank you, Hazel xx
Beautiful, Sophie! You’ve really captured the feeling of that lovely place, and your delight in working in it. X
Thanks Jo xx
A lovely farewell – beautiful writing ❤️🥰