Or plot, vegpatch, garden, fantasy, mistake...you take your pick!
I have written my last 40 or so blogs in my native language, Dutch, and kindly asked all you English speakers to use the provided translator button, but an English blogpost is called for, I think.
The reason for this is simple: this blog is an extra for my followers on Instagram, and 99% of those read English.
So....What's with the allotment and what's all this about my green yearnings?
I teach vocational college English for a living, usually with satisfaction, but I don't have to tell you it is a demanding and thus extremely tiring job. I also don't have to tell you repeated lockdowns have only made my job more exhausting, and my need for real lasting relaxation very urgent indeed! So I was ecstatic when I was number one on the waiting list for an allotment in June 2021, or a volkstuin as we call it over here. No water, no electricity, surrounded by grizzled old (but very sweet) geezers, but my piece of heaven all the same. And quite large: 33x10 m. It has a large shed and a large greenhouse, and when I took it over it was chockablock with beans, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and strawberries. Heaven!
Five days later I was launched by my darling doggie and broke my humerus (upper arm to you), and that was that. Straight from heaven to hell, bam! For it could not be set, and I was in terrible pain and could not sleep in my bed for months.
The veg rotted away before my eyes, awful to behold, but thankfully a colleague took pity on me and forked the potatoes and onions out of the soil.
By mid-August I was weeding with my left hand though and by September I planted my first perennials one-handedly.
My right arm is an only partially functioning pain in the butt to this day, but hey-ho, who cares, I have dug a frog pond with it (twice...) and am in the process of building a gazebo out of pallets. And what was a bare plot in October is now filled for 3 quarters with perennial flowers and shrubs, loads of them gifted by those old geezers.
My greenhouse is filled with seedlings, and I am cleaning the windows in stages, so my future tomatoes, paprikas, chillies and cucumbers will have plenty of light. I have renamed the garden Hunky Dory, that has a so much nicer ring to it than plot 54A. And it is, or will be this Summer, Hunky Dory. A proper garden with flowers and veg. My piece of peaceful green, where my overheated mind can have a rest.
Okay, from my gale-blown Sunday to yours, have a good day.
You can read more about my garden on Instagram @songsmith2962
