A poetry reading

My Allotment
(For Dee and Family)

My allotment means a lot to me
I grow a lot in it you see.
Carrots, parsnips
and beetroot too,
shallots and pots
and varieties new.

I like to sit and sip my tea
and chat and laugh with my family.
They each have a little plot
and love to tend when it’s hot.

And oh the wonder and the fun,
when we go home when day is done,
and put fresh veggies on the plate.
Our healthy, happy appetites to sate.

© Tony Inwood

Tony is a good friend of mine who has in recent years started writing poetry and prose which he frequently publishes for the benefit of his local church in Chiswick. This poem is simply perfect in capturing the essence of keeping an allotment, and Tony has very kindly let me publish it here.

Seed Plan 2008

The plan starts in the last week of January with seven seeds/beans to plant. This afternoon I managed to plant three out of the seven:

Broad Bean - Imperial Green Longpod : there were probably about 50 plus beans in the packet and apart from a small number that were cracked or badly discoloured I probably have planted 50 beans. Mostly in individual pots but also two to a larger pot.

Cabbage - Excel F1 which were planted in two seed trays thinly with a view to planting them out into pots once they have propagated. Again this should result in approximately 30 cabbages which sounds good value for a £1.

Anagallis which is a flower that I have chosen as a staple for my pots and baskets.The seeds, all 50 of them, and no I didn't count them due to their minute size, were scattered gently over the surface of some John Innes No 1, dampened and tucked into a plastic bag then placed on the windowsill of the room that I use to blog on the computer. These seeds require a lot more warmth than the beans and the cabbages and will take about three weeks to sprout. Then they can be transplanted into individual pots to grow on in time for spring and summer.

This leaves me with four more packets of seeds to organise and hopefull there will be time between now and next Saturday to do that. However, I'm still not getting home until after dusk which means sowing by torchlight.

Seed plan going to pot

Goodness ! Is it that time already ? The last week of January beckons and the first opportunity to sow something in the greenhouse.

Gnome has not got a clue if it is the right time or not. The packets of seed were allocated a time slot according to the suggestions on the packets. Apparently the whole lot could be sown in February/March but Gnome is foxing clever. Over the next week the seven seeds selected for sowing will be the first to go in. News on the propagation will be broadcast on a regular basis and a record of success or failure will be kept for reference in 2009. By 2010 Gnome will be in complete control of plant prodction. By 2011 he will be able to manage vegetable production effectively enough to be totally cost effective. Thus we have a Gnome efficient : Gnome squared times broad beans sown in January equals cabbage in October. The nasturtiums can look after themselves.

Gnome focuses on social networking

Down on the Allotment, the allotment blog that last year survived calls for it to be fertilised and left farrow, unveiled a makeover yesterday and promised to become "Britains most ambitious multi - shed network".

Down on the Allotments controller, Gnome, said the three year old blog would ditch the singing compost heap that appeared on odd occasions when there were no photos to publish, in favour of a £5,000,000 new look integrated across the radio in the shed on Plot 12a and the internet. Blog readers were invited to send in their own links as part of new approach designed to embrace user - generated content and social networking.

After criticism from senior gardening figures including a chap with a plot further down the allotments, Gnome was keen to stress the blog's track record in developing new ideas about marrow growing and bringing the joy of humus to a younger audience.

Gnome on the Plot will see the young whipper snapper hosting a digging chatshow in front of an audience consisting of his old neighbours from Plot 14. It will also allow them to put questions to his guest, who he has yet to find.

After criticism from the Blog Control Room that some of his programme titles, such as Soil and Dirty, and Carrots My Way were too sensationalist, Down on the Allotment has toned them down.

New programmes will include Radishes at the Ready, where contestants will aim to knock pigeons off the cabbages and Compost Calamity where contestants beat the clock to turn a three cubic metre of compost - by hand.

(With thanks and apologies to BBC3 and the Guardian)

The most depressing day of the year

So what do you do on the most depressing day of the year ?

Apparently the 21st January is regarded as the most depressing day of the year. It is the end of most peoples holidays. It is still the time of year when you wake up in the dark, go to work in the dark, come home in the dark, go to bed in the dark. If you spend the day in the office and don't go out then you don't get to see daylight or a blue sky if there is one.

So what do you do on the most depressing day of the year ?

The clock turns back to the 18th January at 6pm. There was an almightly gale in Glasgow and winds were gusting at 60 miles per hour or more. It created a wind tunnel at right angles to our street and the garden got hit big time. Gnome kept vigil on his greenhouse which had skited (once again Gnome has to advise readers that this is a good ol' Scottish word that cannot be found in any dictionary that pretends to offer a definition to the English language, or Scottish Language for that matter. The word refers to the act of slipping or sliding and you can see how intelligent the word therefore is) off its base in the earlier gales two weeks past. Gary, he of next door neighbourliness had assisted Gnome by applying the science of a plank as leverage in returning the greenhouse to its original position. You can imagine how nervous Gnome was on the 22nd with this new spate of wind. Especially when Gnome had not as yet acquired an SDS hammer drill to assist him in the anchorage of the greenhouse on its base.

Well, it looked OK during the gale. Observations suggested that it was in its place and not moving. Gnome ventured out next day. Good grief. It had been blown right off the base and one corner appeared to be exposed to the elements. Nothing was broken. Gnome rushed next door for expert support. Alas Gary was in Dundee for an important sporting event. It's called football. In his case Junior Football which in Scotland has nothing to do with young people but a league that has not yet got onto the bottom of the Scottish Football League. However the players are usually ex professional players. Gnome digresses. He had no support available.

Using the plank method, the greenhouse was manoeuvered back into place. Gnome rushed to his local hire store and was able with their help to acquire an SDS hammer drill (don't ask) a transformer (don't even go there) and an 8mm SDS hammer drill bit (even Gnome knows what a bit is). Thus Saturday and Sunday was spent in drilling ten holes and screwing down the greenhouse at long last to its base. It is not going anywhere now.

So what do you do on the most depressing day of the year ?

You take the hammer drill and transformer back to the hire shop at 7.45 am before then driving off to work in the pouring rain. In the dark. No daylight. You drive back in the dark. And you go to bed in the dark.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So then the next day you get the seeds out and you start studying them. Did I really order these ? And you create a plan and you work out when you are going to start sowing them. In the greenhouse, which is as safe as houses. Or in this case, greenhouses.

Gnome's Blog Review 2007

Cyberspace has become the home of a lot of criticism. By this I mean that blogs and bloggers are now synonymous with bored wit and sameness. Innovation and development is hard to achieve within the constraints of a keyboard and a formatted posting. This may be the challenge for all bloggers and the very reason that they do it. " it " being the art of writing. Either to an audience or for the writers own benefit. The fact that many people might chance upon your blog, to view a page because it references a word being googled, or perhaps they happened to like the blog and had signed up for an RSS feed - keeps bloggers active.

It is not a vanity but an active participation in the virtual published world without which most amateur writers might not have an opportunity to benefit from.

This years introduction to Gnomes annual review of blogland, and his own year of posting, is a reference to support the continued interests of bloggers. In this particular case, bloggers who in the main gather round the allotment genre. Keep on blogging, posting, uploading photos - whatever. Folk are reading, getting fun, being inspired, learning new ideas. But also widen your horizon and follow other blog genres as well. Although I have them listed in my favourites column on this page, here are just a handful of my favourites at present.

Being an exiled Southerner means that I frequently miss all things London. The one and only Diamond Geezer is one of my regular reads. He has an almost obsessive, encyclopeadic approach to blogging. He also has a great use of links which take you all over the place for information. Best of all he spends a lot of time keeping his readers updated with the minutiae of the London Underground which seems to undergo changes, additions and deletions every other week. My favourite version of the Underground map is Simon Patterson's The Great Bear which instead of naming the stations as they are, he uses the names of famous people from history and contemporay art and culture to create his own constellation of stars. Another all time favourite of mine is Damaris Sarria who writes the blog How I am Becoming An Astronaut . Damaris is an astronautical science student who keeps the world posted with reports and photos from Kennedy Space Centre. Now I have visited the Centre twice and on each occasion have been in awe of all the exhibits and being able to see the International Space Centre being built and getting up close to the launch pad. So this blog keeps that magic alive for me. I have to give yet another signpost to Akaky Bashmachkin who writes a very literate blog The Passing Parade: Cheap Shots From a Drive By Mind. If you like the dry humour of Garrison Keillor then I suspect you will get on well with this blog. It's a really good read when there is nothing on television. It's also a really good read when there is. I occasionally browse the Blogger lists and I came across this blog written by an American abroad. Called J in the UK the writer appears to be living in London and searching for a house to buy. Her views on life in the UK make for an amusing read of how others see us and our ways. The writer is currently back in the USA for the festive holidays but when she returns I suggest you dip into it for some light hearted takes on on British culture.

Back to Gnomes personal review. Plot 12a has been the focus of activity and has taken up a lot of frustrating activity. From removing serial lumps to building a site for the new hut - and then finding it the victim of a mindless break-in. A turbulent year from the wake of which there has been a lot of support and encouragement. From this I have discovered new and interested readers who have made welcome connections. Amongst them I should mention Kate from Canada who maintains an utterly beautiful blog called Kate Smudges in Earth, Paint and Life and who leaves kind and supportive comments on mine. New last year is a blogger from Sheffield who I have always suspected to be a bit like the fifth Beatle, an escapee from the Travellin' Wilburys known as Woody who keeps his blog Allotment 81 up to date with his derring do's on the moors. To add to the international flavour of my readership I have to take you to Wales for Welsh Girl's Allotment . I recommend this blog to you because it has great photos of a plot that looks so terribly normal and is a great antidote to other photos of allotments that you see in magazines. She had great results for her Christmas dinner, unlike me who was bringing vegetables home from Sainsburys. I also had good support from Frankie at Veg Plot who is trying to compete with Wallace and Gromit by making carrots dance before your eyes. Further away, across the cyber spectrum and to make my blog truly international, yes, from Australia we have Blueblue who conducts her stories from My Spot with Pots which should really win a prize for best graphic heading as well as title. The photos are splendid.

The allotment blog circle has some stalwarts who are the anchor of many bloggers favourite lists and among my favourites are :

Pumpkin Soup who sadly has given up her allotment in favour of starting a potager garden which hopefully will continue to fulfil her growing ambitions. P'Soup is a gentle reminder of why we grow things and spend our time writing about it. You get fed up reading gardening magazines after a while and when Jamie Oliver starts not only telling you how to cook but also to grow the stuff, well, you might as well give up and turn to this blog for the real thing.

Horticultural is written by Jane Perrone who is a journalist and author. What I like about her style is that she is informative, inspirational and leads you quietly and confidently in her organic mission without preaching to you. She has been inviting readers to send in their photos of sheds which get posted onto her Shed of The Week. At present you are invited to send in your list of five resolutions for 2008. I'm still trying to think of the second one. (the first being : grow two different seeds each week in the greenhouse from February onwards) . Jane published a book at the beginning of 2007, The Allotment Keepers Handbook" which I reviewed . I recommend it to you if you are still looking for the answers !

These two stalwarts are Gnomes personal favourites on whose building blocks his own blog has been built. If bloggers are enthusiastic enough to keep it going for more than two years then they should consider themselves writers of substance. Even if, as in the case of P' Soup, they occasionally experience long periods of bloggers block.

The blogging year came to an end two days ago and the anticipation of the growing season has already started. The seeds are being collated, the growing plan has begun. The plans for the plot are being drawn. There will be sufficient to write about in 2008 and hopefully you will all keep the faith - reading and writing your blogs and connecting with the outside world in more ways than one.