‘We’re not all terrible’: the landlords who keep rents low. I know good landlords exist but as a tenant, I feel vulnerable all the time. This article was obviously a response to this one ‘Can that be legal?’ UK tenants forced from their homes by soaring rents and I can’t help but feel that this is missing the point. I have a good landlord, he’s been great but I have a kitchen that is falling apart and no date for when it will be fixed, although it will be this year. I know there are reasons, but I don’t feel I can ask for a definite date, because in July the contract gets renewed and I’m already worried that some of the things he wants to do are because he wants to sell it, which is what happened to my mum. I’ve done the legwork of getting a design which should be a good sign that he wants me to have a kitchen I’m happy with. But moving would cost a fortune, buying anywhere even via shared ownership is pretty impossible and I have no security of tenure. I’m always worried about it even though I’ve lived there 13 years. Rent controls, minimum standards, an end to no fault evictions should be the minimum renters should expect.
This week, I started to pot on the tomatoes. I thought I was being restrained. Reader, I was not. Eight small pots turned into 71 seedlings and I have one more pot to go but I’ve run out of compost. This is before I sown the cucumbers, summer and winter squash and melons.
I know, you don’t need to tell me. I have plans for 54 plants max. So if you live in West London or work near St Paul’s and would like some tomatoes, hit me up!
Ma and I needed to do an emergency seedlings supplies run to Wilko on Saturday (because 71 seedlings is a lot of trays!) and after that we got down to work. First watering, it’s been 50% drier than an average April this year and it shows, everything is parched. There was also a tiny triumph, last year Ma weeded my bleeding heart. It’s not a strong as it was last year, but it survived to flower this year.
Bleeding Heart
Ma spent all most of the four hours on the plot cutting back the rosemary. She did help me with netting the gooseberries and sowing the parsnips but it’s a lot of rosemary…
The gooseberries are now protected from the magpies…
Protection and the hope we’ll actually eat some gooseberries this year.
An allotment neighbour gave me some scaffold netting for this, we did have to ‘sew’ the gaps with twine but it works. Soon we’ll tackle the blueberries and the blackcurrants but that’s going to be more tricky because of how many there are. I know I’ve said this a lot this year but I have a feeling we’re going to be blueberry rich this year!
Future blueberries
I made some changes to the wilderness area. I call it the wilderness area but it’s just area with some lavender and things I like self seed in. There was a lawn edging bed there between the lavender and verbena bonareises for a while, I took it out sometime in 2020 and it’s been home to tulips and self seeded calendula, more verbena bonareisis, white cornflowers, borage, amaranth, orache, mallow, coriander, rocket and whatever else turns up. Last year in July it looked like this and I loved that in my very tidy allotment had this wild area. Look at it, how could you not be seduced by it?
Wild
However, in winter it looks terrible and bare. I wanted to put some greenery that could hold its own in the cold. So I’ve relocated the ‘hot and spicy’ oregano that Ma ‘weeded’ from the front bulb bed last year, it has survived but not thrived, so I moved it. I also got a golden thyme from Urban Herbs last year and it hasn’t had a proper place so in it went. I also had the surviving sweetpeas and camomile in the poly so I planted all of the sweet peas and some of the camomile as well. The camomile is lawn so if it really spreads that’s perfect too. I watered and then mulched because that’s supposed to help with evaporation and it’s warmish and very dry for April.
I love how much the cornflowers look like the camomile. I also have a bed that has an abundance of chives in it, I’m going to move some of them, into this area and I have some nasturtium, echinacea, forget-me-not and nemesia seeds to sow so I’m expecting that some of them will find their way into this area too. Although the nasturtium are actually planned for near the winter squash and bean beds. (Ma says two allotment plots would be too many so I’m just going to pack in as many growing things as I can into this one!)
Wilderness in April
I have four more camomile plants and I do have plans for them but I need to sort out the patio area but that won’t be until at least June. Anyway, we also sowed parnips, repaired the one arch we’ve put together, please admire the much shorter rosemary bushes.
Shorter Rosemary
I did some weeding, it’s that time of year, the bind weed is re-appearing and it’s time for the ‘never let it see a Monday’ plan (it’s a war of attrition, you just have to keep pulling it up!), then about a hour and a half after we planned it, we collected our hungry gap harvest, chard (nearly a kilo), rhubarb (just over a kilo), mint, oregano, chives and lemon thyme.
Last week was emotional. Lots of reasons none of which are mine to share. So instead of telling you about the week, I’m going to list some good things in it.
Drinks on Wednesday after work. I’m coming up on four years in this job and I can’t tell you what a relief it is to work somewhere I like, that likes me right back. I have made friends at other workplaces, but I just plain like what I do and the people I do it with.
Chocolate brownies. I made some, they are ace.
My Mum. This week was tricky, my first processing call was to Ma. We can, and do, drive each other to distraction on occasion but when I was a young dramatic adult, Ma was able to hold my brother and I with love and grace and forgiveness and a massive dose of ‘YOU will sort your shit out, but I’m always going to be here to help’. I’m not a parent but this week, I had to do that and I was able to do it because she showed me how. Thanks Ma
Friends who get it. If Ma was my first call, Sarah was my second. It’s so nice not to have to explain it. Thanks love.
Rhubarb. First proper harvest of 2022.
Books, reading and the comfort I can take, people are difficult, Georgette Heyer is not.
Harvest
This week, I’m hoping for an easier week, It’s my first five day week in a while and I’m in the office three days. I have loads to do in work and at home, so it’s head down and plough through.
Today is the anniversary of my Grandad’s death and so I feel the urge to make some bread pudding. Grandad would not appreciate a lot of fuss, so I will even though it’s a Monday, go to work and get on with the business of life because that is the behaviour he liked to model.
We had a small list and as is the way with the plot, we did loads but not all of the things we planned on.
Firstly, the water has been switched on which is really good because everything needed watering. Ma did the front, with particular attention to the gooseberry bushes (she also cut back some dead branches) and I did the back and the polytunnel, I also fertilised the blueberries and roses!
Then we sorted out the blueberries, but that meant adding posts to one of the raspberry beds. We have two beds, one I cut right down in January and one I just tidied a bit. That second bed is flowering already which was my plan, so we get a longer run of raspberries and hopefully not too much of a glut! However that means that we are going to need to contain the canes a bit and we’ve had this on the plan for both beds but I’m short on posts and wire, but we started with what we had and got three of the posts up. I’ll finish it when I’ve bought more posts and wire.
Raspberry control
Then we set up some arches for netting the blueberries, it’ll be a bit of a squeeze (there are eight bushes!) but should all fit. If all the blossom turns into fruit, we are going to be drowning in berries.
Blueberry protection in the making
Then we planted the rest of the potatoes, we now have 12 pots, that is quite a few potatoes but seems to work for us.
Rows of potato pots
We then filled a raised bed with compost and sowed beetroot. And having got all the water bins where we wanted them (one by the blueberries, one by the squash beds and one in the poly tunnel), we filled them up. Lots of trips to the water tank but not as bad as the pumping we did last week!
I planted the wild garlic at the back of the plot, I ended up making a very fast bed by the compost bin, they are quite shaded but that should work. I bought them from an instagram friend (Anjee) so I haven’t been raiding nature for them, but they should spread like weeds and if I’m going to have weeds, I want useful ones!
While I was doing that, I noticed that my favourite rose that I didn’t move or cut last year, was in bud and there were greenfly, so I gave that a spray.
My favourite yellow rose
At that point we were flagging (it had been over three hours in the sun). I collected chard, mint and rhubarb, Ma tidied up and we went home and made a future work list and redid the plan of the plot.
trim rosemary and oregano
transplant a thyme and oregano plant to the ‘wild area’
sow parsnips and parsley in beds
weed beds
sort out boysenberry area
build arches
paint shed
sow brassicas
pot on tomatoes
sow squash, melons and cucumbers
As you can see the boysenberry area is in dire need of some work!
The weather was warm, the sun shone, I got my feet out, read 5 books (bank holidays are for reading!) and worked on the plot.
This week is short and work based, everyone is back so it will be full of sorting out meetings and diaries. I’m four weeks away from my holiday and only two of those weeks are full five day weeks, which means I need to concentrate a bit harder to get things set up in my absence, no one is going to really suffer without me but I have things that need to be done by the time I go away!
Blossom
At home, I need to catch up on laundry, housework and seedlings. Life is not that challenging or changeable at the moment and I’m happy for it. It’s age, I don’t at all miss the hurly burly of emotions and dramas that populated my 20’s and 30’s, I like my non dramatic 40’s!
Sometimes, at this time of year, I look at the plot and I think about all the things I need to do and sigh, sometimes I feel really smug because we’re so far ahead of ourselves. For this year, I don’t really feel either of those things.
The plot is looking good, it’s tidy, things are blossoming, even though I’m one blueberry bush down from last year, I think we’ll have a really big crop of them. I have sown tomatoes indoors and they are still little. The leeks in the polytunnel are starting to come up and so are the radishes and salad in the bed. I do need to get on with sowing the brassicas and there are always things to be sorted but I think we’re doing ok.
First time this bush has blossomed
At the weekend, we started with refilling the bird feeders and collecting water. Things are pretty dry at the moment and the water hasn’t been switched on so Ma and I made several trips to the pump to fill up our water bins. I always get a bit miffed when I see gardeners on YouTube talking about ‘hand watering’ and they have hoses. I’m very lucky that the tap is pretty near my plot but I have to collect it in 10 litre watering cans, given how much water some of my crops need in the summer, that is a lot of backwards and forwards. I have three 80 litre water bins at the plot which I use but they still have to be filled and one of those does one squash bed in August (I remember that first summer when I only had four beds and I couldn’t understand why people moaned about watering because it only took me 10 minutes, now it takes roughly 45 minutes in summer!) but having to walk to the pump, pump the water and then carry it back to the plot does make me feel for my ancestors and realise how lucky I am.
That done, we watered the poly and the garlic and onions and planting the potatoes, we’ve left the potatoes later than usual because it’s been chilly and I always put them out too early and they get knocked back by frost, this year I decided to leave it until later. We’re growing Red Duke of York which is a first early and should be ready in about 14 weeks. We planted up 5 pots and we’ll start harvesting at the beginning of July. Next week we’ll put the Nicolas out, we have slightly more of those and they are a second early so I expect that we can start harvesting at the beginning of August, when the Red Duke of Yorks are finished. I will take some of the harvest of Nicolas and plant again for Christmas potatoes, we can store them in the pots in the polytunnel. This year I’m hoping that I can get leeks, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and kale from the plot for Christmas dinner, and if I’m very lucky brussels sprouts, we’ll see how it goes.
We also re-covered the celeriac bed (after Ma pulled up the celeriac thinking it was weeds – she really does need constant supervision!) and I sent Ma to sorting out the strawberry bath. We’re not going to get loads of strawberries this year, I think we started with five plants, but I do plan on taking any runners and planting up a tower for next year.
I finally weeded the rose garden and pond area, I will mulch that either this weekend or next month when I get more compost, but the area is looking good and the pond was full of bees (the water level has dropped and I need to clear out the pond plants but meanwhile it’s the perfect place for bees to drink from! I’m really enjoying the way that the oregano and lavenders are seeding and spreading in the rose garden, the bees like it and it means less places for the weeds to land. I also planted freesias in the front of the iris bed and dug out any encroaching raspberries from the path. It’s not a battle I can win, but I do need to keep fighting or they’ll just cover the entire plot!
The rose garden and pond area
Next weekend, I need to get to shed painting and the shed could probably do with a tidy! We will need to sort out how we are going to cover the blueberries – I’m thinking of something similar to the gooseberry netting. I would like to sort out the very overgrown area where the boysenberry is. It’s past time to sow the brassicas, I also need to sow the summer plants, squash, melons and some cucumbers, indoors. Outside we need to sow beetroot and maybe resow the carrots and peas because they aren’t doing anything. Finally, we need to build more arches.
The new flower bed, the peony survived the move but we may not get any flowers for a while!
I borrowed this one from Ma a while ago and finally got to reading it at the tail end of last month. I enjoyed it, I love her writing in the Guardian and this was just more of it. Some of it was quite close to home, she is a couple of months younger than me and North/South divide notwithstanding, I remember some of this. (Like Grace, I also got shoved into a ‘modular science’ GCSE.)
Some of the things that she ascribes to being working class and Gen X, seem to have more to do with being Northern or down to her family. I remember how the food we bought changed in the eighties and nineties but not on the scale it happened to the Dent’s. My mother has always been fairly anti sugar, we were the weird family who didn’t drink hot drinks with sugar in them, and my Grandad didn’t bring us sweets every week, we got fruit and breakaways for our packed lunches. (The cousins did get sweets from Grandad, I’m still bitter but on the plus side didn’t have my first filling until I was 19!). Christmas did get a tiny bit more elaborate, we started to have smoked salmon sandwiches after Church but we never ate turkey for Christmas.
She writes brilliantly about her heady experience of London in 1996 and it’s so weird to see London through her eyes because when you’re from here, it’s different.
I also think it’s vulnerable in a particular working class way. Throughout the book, she details that her father basically abandoned three children, she talks about it, about how she begins to realise something isn’t right, yet can’t put her finger on it and then her shock when she knows what he did. She alludes to this being why she ‘runs’ away but she never looks too closely or tells you what she feels about it. All the information is there and yet not. It feels familiar, honest but not truly open, because you can’t stop people knowing facts but there’s no reason to be emoting everywhere, I like her more for it and for this, which I couldn’t agree with more:
Some years would pass before I accepted that my type of working-class people are really not suited to being bohemian, as bohemian really means chaotic, self-destructive, whimsical and a bit whiffy. Most North London bohemians would be a lot happier if they stopped wife-swapping and got a nice ‘To-Do’ list on the go; then their homes might be full of neat rows of fabric conditioned socks, rather than self-involved sobbing, cat piss and orchids
