When I was young, like most girls my age, I watched The Secret Garden. After that any time I was near a large hedge or overgrown bramble I would expect to find a door. One time I did find an old key which I would take with me whenever I thought I was likely to come into contact with a hedge. I never found a door, I never found a secret garden and I never turned out to be a princess… although that might have been another film.
We did get an allotment though and every weekend my family and I would trudge down to it and check on the fruits and vegetables, pull out weeds, plant potatoes etc. then go home to make rhubard crumbles and eat peas straight from the pod.
For those who don’t know, an allotment is an area of land, owned by the local council, which you rent to grow fruits and veggies.
I think they were originally set up in WW2 when everyone was growing extra food to make up the rations. Nowadays they are mainly populated by older men, escaping their wives for an afternoon with their allotment buddies.
We gave our allotment up when I was about 12, I’m not sure why. Perhaps my parents became disinterested or the rent went up. By then I’d moved on from wanting to find a secret garden but the enjoyment I got from planting a seed and watching it turn into a plant is deep-rooted (lolz punz).
Rus has a balcony off of his bedroom, unused except by the cat, I expressed an interest in getting some plants on it last time I visited, I envisaged growing a few herbs that would make the evening air fragrant as we sat sipping drinks and reading books. Rus went into overdrive and bought about twenty million plants. He then promptly got bored of it and they all started dying off. The mini succulents in their tiny pots remained knocked over by a swish of the cat’s tail, the peppers shriveled up, the herbs dried out and turned to fragrant dust.
I decided to take matters into my own hands and spent the last few weeks slowly working through all the plants, I’ve used my gardening knowledge (all learned from the secret garden film) to check which were saveable and which needed to go. I managed to get rid of a lot of them before Rus figured out what I was doing – he’s somewhat of a hoarder.
When he found out he was a little upset, I’m not too sure why because it wasn’t like he was tending to the plants. To reassure him I wasn’t just recklessly throwing things away I told him my Secret Garden tip; that if something looks dead and you nick it with a knife and it’s green inside then it’s actually saveable with a bit of TLC.
Rus got really excited by this and started chopping at everything and exclaiming ITS ALIVE! like a mad man. Unfortunately they were the ones I’d already checked (and two new ones that I’d only just bought. Which were still green. AND FLOWERING) and his ‘nicking’ was actually chopping off an entire stem so I have a few half-hacked up, but very much alive, plants.
Then he got to the coriander plant which looked very much dead, I’d already tugged at it and it was so dry it just crumbled away, right from the root, all that remained was a little twig that I’d already decided to get rid of. But, Rus had his shears and chopped it in half and sure enough there was a bit of green inside. Rus got really excited that he hadn’t killed all the plants and is insisting I keep it and look after it. So every other day I water a twig in a pot and wonder how I didn’t realise Rus had special needs sooner and if he’ll notice if I just replace it.
Before and after shots…
Flop! 