The reliable(ish) magic of planting seeds
Battling systems far greater than you is much more fun at the allotment.
The sky is white grey, not a beautiful day but try telling the birds that. They belt out the classics, flying overhead with twigs and feathers to soup up their nests.
As for me, I am tackling the allotment. In filthy soft gardening gloves, I fork through one of the semi-overgrown beds. We've just received our first 'come the fuck on, Bridget!' notice, and now it's stopped raining I’m doing my best.
It isn't terrific, my best. Slapdash is my destiny, and I have only an hour or two before I'll need to return to Baba. But already I’m immersed. Pushing wonky fork tines through earth in search of long white couch grass roots.
I try not to hurt anyone in my path, but it's impossible. "I'm sorry mate.” Another worm hasn't made it. Perhaps the others will tunnel up to collect him, "Leave no invertebrate behind!" From their perspective (and mine) this is a massacre.
Sometimes I wish I was a forager because allotmenting is just too violent. Who am I to decide whether this dandelion lives or dies?
Well, I am the renter of 35c! Thats who. And this is my dominion. Here I hopelessly battle with forces much greater and more determined than me.
The allotment has the same comforting and inspiring feeling of being in the library. The quiet togetherness of thinking and doing alongside others, trying to improve or alter, through a better understanding of how the world works.
It was more than seven years ago that I learned the soil is alive. Not mud as I had believed, but a giant organism that lived and could die. Someone called Carrie taught me in a classroom in Frenchay where I was learning how to grow vegetables as a means of fending off existential crisis. I was newly sober and newly single, deconstructing my life, without entirely understanding why, but hoping growing peas might somehow help me rebuild it. (And it somehow did!)
Carrie taught us about nematodes and protozea and, best of all, tardigrades, these microscopic show stoppers who seared themselves into my memory from that very first meeting. The tardigrade. Water bear. Moss piglet. Someone very tiny and very useful, who could survive in outer space. How I needed a tiny talisman then! (Ok, I still do.)
I dig through the soil now with a terrible awareness of the systems I am destroying on my Totally Doomed Quest to remove all perennial weed roots from what will become my veg bed. Why on earth do I bother? The vegetables I grow here must cost 100 times more than in the shops!
But economics be damned. I scrape clay-y soil from claggy boot. I will master this system! The ground warns me not to bother planting seeds today - carrot, spinach, lettuce, peas - I have a pretty selection and am itching to pour them into the ground. But no. I must listen.
My third or fourth year of vastly unsuccessful allotmenting, have I finally become humble? Is this the year I adhere to at least some of the guidance? Planting seeds in a fine tilth, number one.
It's painful to follow rules, but when the soil speaks, I am trying to listen.
Because this tilth is not fine, but great big sodden boulders of clay. Even spinach seeds would perish here. I must accept reality! This is what I Iearned getting sober. It isn't an easy lesson, but when you can do it, it helps.
I put the seeds away. They are absolutely magic but not actually magic.
Attempting to prune a gnarled old apple tree rushes the rest of my time away from me.
It would be helpful to know what I am doing but I don't and so I Just Do Something.
I remind myself of all I've learned about pruning over the years. I look and look and look at the branches, repeating the words 'open goblet’ and ‘let light in and air circulate’ but I can't make sense of the tree.
It is defiantly wonky, with a pallet shoved under one branch to try and course-correct its disastrous development.
I lop a limb feeling like a psychopath, then chop another because now I've got a taste for it. Is something better starting to emerge? I have no idea. I'm suspecting possibly not.
After each cut, I imagine a group of professional apple pruners wincing, “Dear god, not that branch, you halfwit!”
They have gathered in a polytunnel to watch me butcher this poor tree. I don't know why they are so interested nor how they are streaming the footage - I can't see any cameras - but their comments are discouraging.
My alarm goes off. It's time to stop but I'm not ready. I'm thoroughly enjoying this haphazard mutilation process. With the powerful resistance that accompanies the end of all tasks in which I have lost myself, I force myself to begin tidying up.
I have no real clue if I have improved this space’s growing abilities, but boy have I Done Some Stuff.
I gather the fallen branches and drag them to the ‘bad bit’ at the bottom of the allotment where I hide all the evidence.
I chuck the perennial weed roots into their special separate composting bin (another rule I am finally following!)
My hope is that if I keep going and don't give up, I might start to succeed occasionally with my growing project. Sure, so far it hasn't happened, but that doesn't mean it won't.
Today I pruned the apple trees (better late than never), weeded a whole bed, and Didn't Plant spinach, peas or carrots because if I did they only would have rotted. I'll be back tomorrow with compost (fine tilth baby!) to give them a better chance. And who knows, maybe this year will be the year that Everything Works.
Daffodils nod their heads and silvery artichoke leaves stretch out to catch the last of the sun. Tulips and perpetual spinach and cavolo nero dot the mostly empty beds. Pigeons fly overhead, looking for garlic sets to tug at.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a wounded worm being pulled back under the soil by another worm, a healthy one.
“Hold on to me!” he cries, and I wonder at all the other beings I can't see or can see but don’t understand.
Are foxes scoping me now? Deer or cats or rats or ladybirds? Waiting until the coast is clear to do their own busy work.
Maybe we're all in it together. Or maybe we're not but I can choose to believe we are anyway because humans are famously delusional and nobody can stop us. It's hard to be a compulsive sense maker in a world that doesn’t make sense.
We find things to do that give us purpose and something about the casual violence and destruction of maintaining an allotment does it for me.
Because if you plant a carrot seed in a fine enough tilth, and you return to water it, and you’re lucky enough not to get carrot fly, or a hungry rabbit, and the earth doesn’t just absorb it out of sheer mean spiritedness, and you remember to return to pick it, there's a slim chance you really could eat a carrot that you've grown yourself.
Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She writes about addiction, nature and love here, and is working on a novel about getting sober, as well as a new YA novel.
I always enjoy reading your posts, even if I know absolutely nothing about the primary topic (gardening is definitely not my thing 😂), your writing has a sense of clarity that I find reassuring, it just makes sense.
This is beautiful. It's great to hear from you! This made me laugh "It would be helpful to know what I am doing but I don't" <-- I relate to so much of what you write. Thank you for sharing. -Sam