This Blessed Plot

Hazel Southam

Description

Gardening and growing has never been so popular, nor has the awareness of why we need to do it been so acute. When Hazel Southam took on an overgrown and neglected strip of ground in a local council allotment, she had nothing more than beginner’s enthusiasm and fond memories of her late father’s passion for growing. In This Blessed Plot she relates with humour, wry observation and poignancy the story of her first year as an allotment holder.
With Hazel, we feel the sheer effort of clearing the ground of debris and patiently nourishing the exhausted soil, the camaraderie and unexpected kindness of strangers, the pleasures of mending and making do, the miracle of seeds sprouting, and the problem of what do to with so much lettuce.
This Blessed Plot speaks to the zeitgeist that is gardening and mental and emotional health. But it goes further and reflects gently on spiritual health too, on friendship, generosity, wellbeing, and our mutual dependence on creation and each other. Amusing, perceptive and wise, This Blessed Plot is for anyone who has an interest in gardening.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Spiritual Growth
• Christian Living
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 29 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786223449
• Langue: English

Extrait

This Blessed Plot
Hazel Southam






© Hazel Southam 2021
First published in 2021 by the Canterbury Press Norwich
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.
The Author has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78622-342-5
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd





This book is dedicated to Mary Southam, who loved orchards.




Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction

January: Preparation
February: Structure
March: Hope
April: Care
May: Crazy Busyness
June: Expansion
July: Abundance
August: The Importance of Water
September: Thankfulness
October: Preserving
November: Renewal
December: Quiet Times
What Happened Next

Appendix
Recipes




Acknowledgements
My heart is full of gratitude to all the people who’ve made this adventure possible. Maurice McDonagh and Jim Meharg took the initiative and turned my dream into reality at the outset. After them, a whole community absorbed and helped me, so my thanks go to everyone at the allotments who’s ever been kind, lent me their power tools, helped build something, passed on seeds, donated plants or offered words of encouragement. You know who you are. You are all special and much appreciated.
Particular thanks go to those who, through geography, ended up helping me more than they might have imagined was feasible: Barbara, Garry, James and James, Nikki, Allison, Kasia, Rose, Merv, Val, Gary, Fran, Ian, Mike and Pete.
None of this would have been possible without the encouragement of good friends: Laura Pritchard, Geordie Torr, Fran Clifton, Rachel Bassindale, Phil Comer and Sarah Eberle.
All these people, and more, have helped achieve something that seemed unreachable and beyond me, but that has been utterly enriching. Any success is theirs. Any mistakes in the telling are mine.
Thanks also go to the team at Hymns Ancient & Modern who thought that this was a tale worth telling. I hope it inspires you.




Preface

Come through the big metal gate into a hidden, little-seen world. Tucked away on the edge of Winchester lie the Highcliffe Allotments, snuggled between the M3 and a housing estate. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s a little slice of heaven that locals have been working for more than 100 years.
As you walk with me along the bumpy track, you’ll see more than 100 plots, some tidy, some less so, all productive and special in their own way. The track is rutted and plots lie on either side. The M3 is to our right, the housing estate to our left. And at the end there are fields that are home to pigs, sheep, hens and geese.
We’ll pass the goats on our left and say hello to a few friends on our way in, some of whose names have been changed in this book. Because the site is on the side of a hill (all of Winchester is on a hill) it’s windy here, even on a still summer’s day. The soil depends on where you are, and how much it’s been worked. On my plot it’s heavy, formerly unloved clay. But the good news is that the plot is south-facing, the great joy of gardeners, as it gives their plants the longest possible hours of sunlight.
When we’ve walked 100 yards, we come to two small plots on the right-hand side of the track in need of much love and attention. I have been assigned the lower one, so I am entirely surrounded by other allotments and can watch and learn from their development.
This is the story about the transformation of that plot and the unexpected transformation that it wrought in me. It’s cheaper than therapy, and at the end there’s something to eat, in fact lots to eat. I am not a world-famous gardener. I’m a middle-aged woman trying something new. I’m also a journalist, and have spent more than 30 years telling other people’s stories, both in this country and around the world. It was a surprise to be grounded and have my own story changed by a small patch of earth, to find that patch of ground shaping and telling my story, revealing my weaknesses and strengths, opening a chink in my heart for renewal and the growth of faith as well as vegetables. I was only expecting lettuces, so that was a surprise.
Let me encourage you, if you’ve ever enjoyed a meal and wondered where your food came from, to try growing something. Growing connects us with our food, but also with the weather, seasons and the land that we inhabit. It reminds us of our mortality, and takes us beyond ourselves into community, spirituality and our place in the world. It is about a great deal more than vegetables, but the vegetables are enjoyable too.
Take a seat under the Victoria plum tree where there is some shade. You, like everyone else, are welcome here. Gardening like this is about growing friendships, as well as growing plants. It’s about people and their stories. You can’t be a solitary allotment holder. So, welcome to a small space of flourishing.





Introduction

Everything changed over a cup of tea. Perhaps as I’m English, that isn’t surprising. Life revolves around tea. It was a chance conversation with my 91-year-old mother that swept in the change. Every now and then we have The Conversation about why I’m not married. Answer: the marriages I saw up close as a child were off-putting. Far, far too many compromises were being made by the women. There seemed to be more hurt and sadness than joy, contentment or simply even-handedness. I decided early on that marriage didn’t appeal. Too late, I realized that there are better, healthier ways of being married than those early examples. But there’s no way back, and I am content with my lot. The journalist’s life has taken me around the UK and the world. I have kind friends and delightful godchildren. You could do a lot worse.
And what are the options? Online dating? The very thought makes me shudder. So when The Conversation came around again, I searched for comparisons, for dreams that might actually be fulfilled. Even the idea of marriage, let alone the reality, is in the rear-view mirror. ‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘I’d rather have an orchard than be married.’
As I said it, it became true. The words hung in the air, almost glistening. In that moment, planting fruit trees became what I wanted to do. I have no children as a legacy for my life, but an orchard would be a good second.
Both my mother and I seized upon the idea. We’d grown up, like generations of our family, in a village in Buckinghamshire. Back then, in the 1960s, the village was still full of the cherry orchards that had been its livelihood. The cherries went to market. The wood was turned into chair legs. My grandfather talked of picking cherries and putting them on the London train in the morning. My great-uncle was a bodger, turning chair legs for the nearby chair-making industry.
This isn’t a far-off Arcadia. It’s living memory of real lives. But the orchards are grubbed up now. New housing stands where they once blossomed. According to government statistics, half of Britain’s pear orchards and two-thirds of its apple orchards have been felled since 1970. I can find no statistics for cherry orchards, which tells a story in itself.
In my grandparents’ day, more than 200 varieties of fruit could be found growing in Britain’s orchards, and each village had its own unique varieties. Our village, Holmer Green, was cherry central. My father recalled everything stopping for the cherry harvest: men, women and children picking the fruit for weeks, until it had all been harvested and sold. Enormous care was taken of the trees. Great pride attached to how long a ladder you could carry by yourself. Tireless wars were waged against starlings, the major threat to the harvest. If a flock of starlings landed in your trees, they could ruin the harvest in an hour. Keeping them out of the trees was the challenge.
My father’s solution was The Clanger. Bits of old metal hung in a bunch from the bough of a cherry tree. Two ropes attached it to the sitting room and my parents’ bedroom. When my father heard starlings he could pull the rope, even if he was in bed, and clang, the metal would fall into a metal wheelbarrow, the noise scattering the invading starlings.
Like all our neighbours, we had quite a bit of land, and it was stuffed with fruit trees. My sun-filled memories of childhood are of joining my father in scaring the starlings out of the cherry trees and climbing traditional cherry ladders to pick basket after basket of fruit.
We had four main varieties in our garden. The Early River is a red-black variety that starts to fruit at the end of May, and dates back to 1872. It was followed by the Waterloo, one of the oldest known varieties in Britain, first planted here in 1815. It has luscious dark-red flesh and is thickly juicy.
Then came two Bigarreaux. Bigarreau Napoleon dates to 1832 and is a beautiful, large, yellow, heart-shaped fruit with a blu