For Pests.

My current allotment reading is 'The Gardening Year', by The Readers Digest Association Ltd, published in 1969. It's a book almost too heavy to read standing up, and smells of dusty conservatories when you turn the pages. It's waxed, linen-look cover feels like sun bleached oil-cloth and it's a rare day at the allotment that I don't find myself sitting on the grass, skimming through it's chapters before settling on the month of May's 'Vegetables: Guide to Cultivation' chart.

Dinocap
Paraquat
Simazine
Dalapon

The names of these ancient weedkillers appear like arcane gods again and again. After the bedside manner of more modern gardening books by the likes of Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh this heavy use of pesticides seems renegade, lawless. But this book seems to suit the allotment, the strange poetry of it. I often see my neighbouring plot-holder John with a tank on his back, spraying his paths, trees, fruit bushes, anything goes...

His wife Wilma regularly brings me bits and pieces from their plot: asparagus, cauliflowers and yesterday the first of the seasons strawberries; deliciously sweet, mis-shapen and red to the core. She also brought with her a leaf on which a small black, furry looking beetle sat, it's back marked with yellow splotches, one front leg feeling the breeze as we looked on. "This," said Wilma, "Is a baby ladybird. Just in case you've never seen one before."

I looked for them as I weeded between the rows of puntarelle, spinach and peas, smiling as Mohammad called to me "You look like a scientist!" He wheeled his barrow to my plot and stopped. "Such straight rows. You're like a, what's it's name? An Archaeologist, on a dig."

A truely golden day at the allotment.

Illustration by Robert Gillmor, from the wonderful 'The Bird Table Book' by Tony Soper.