I want to start with a question, (I do that quite a lot I’ve noticed. Should stop) have you ever seen a mole alive? I ask because I’ve just got back from the allotment where I found yet another dead mole. I find at least one a year. They are very pretty and soft looking but they are always dead. Are moles ever actually alive or was this mole just playing dead? You know, with the maggots being in on the joke and stuff.

 At this time of year it is hard work to drag your sorry self away from the radiators and the endless cups of tea of your house and out into the wind-swept, rain sodden world to do some weeding but it has to be done.

The last time I was there I noticed that a large amount of grass seed had started to germinate so I knew that I had to return, hoe in hand, and take it on. Unfortunately it has been a little rainy for the last week and a half so I haven’t been able to get there. Today, however, it was only windy. Really, really windy but only windy, no rain.

 After the weekend’s deluge the river is again running very high as I cross the little bridge. Slate grey skies and high winds, and the fact that it’s a Monday afternoon and most people are at work, means that I am the only soul there. Even the ducks look at me strangely, as if they are saying, “you really can’t want Cavlo Nero this much.”

 Of course I don’t. I want to hoe. So I begin. Mud sticking to boot, as it was at the Somme, except with more raised beds and less incredibly high levels of young men’s lives being cut tragically short. Small weeds and recently germinated grass is no match for my recently sharpened hoe, despite it now being now mud-caked.

 I’m making quite a lot out of this which is a bit much really as it only took me 10 minutes and all was well again. Neatness had been restored.

Several things were picked, some salad leaves and various iron rich green leaves, but most interestingly, for me anyway, some dried runner beans. I had left some pods on the plant to dry in the hope of being able to use them next year and today I decided that they were dry enough.

 On the outside they look a little dull

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But see how pretty the beans are

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They fill my heart with a little beany joy.

 

I also got a new bird feeding station for my tiny, tiny back garden.


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Yes it’s a little over the top but the birds need a hand through the winter. It’s nice to be nice.