Dear Allotment,
It’s over. Cheers for all those carrots (especially the purple ones) the beans, the courgettes, the courgettes, the courgettes, the beetroot (that D only ate because it made her wee turn red) the amazing pumpkins, the aubergines (that never really worked) the peppers, tomatoes, sweetcorn, spinach, strawberries (that kept the kids quiet for hours while I worked) and the Jerusalem artichokes (whose unsavoury effects lingered for days) the rhubarb, butternut squash (that some bastard nicked) and all the other fruit and veg that kept us in our five a day and kept us out of Tesco. We’ve eaten in bucketfuls (and so have those bloody slugs.)
Cheers also, for the moments of sanity, clarity, inspiration and peace. Cheers for being there when I needed to escape – from the Mother In Law, Unhusband, the kids, and at times, from myself. Life has been better with you in it. But it’s over.
This Sunday we’re off to the annual allotment barbecue. Not to enter our prize courgettes (which never won, anyway) but to say goodbye. To tell Mick, Clive, Reg and the rest that they won’t be seeing the kids again. And for that, I’m sorry. J, D and A have seen more of those guys, than they have of their own grandparents. We’ll have to get chickens instead. Or something.
After years of procrastinating, we’re MOVING. Our stint in suburbia is over. The lure of sea, and some land of our own on which to grow our own, finally won.
In four weeks time we’ll be living in Devon. I hope the grass really is greener.
Allotmentmum will continue. (With apologies for any disruption while essential works are carried out.)
ps. Cheers for the prolapsed disc, too. You could have kept that one.
