Bloom and revulsion

The late afternoon sunlight highlights plot detail. Artichokes glow silvery and sculptural in the waning light; fading cosmos flowers drift, their lush foliage weighing them down to one side. Wind blown, they grow horizontal now, flower heads tilted upwards towards the light, nodding in the breeze, like half-asleep park-bench drunks.

I take my time cutting flowers for home, enjoying the quiet warmth of the evening sun on my back. My heart is still racing a little from the shock of discovering a mouldering rat in the far corner of the shed. Despite knowing it is dead, I half expect it to pin those black eye sockets on me; twitch, rise up, and dart out the open door.


I must think about building a new shed soon. This one is home to so many invaders.

Summer Passed.

Summer rattled past in a blur, a steady cycle of planting and weeding that at times felt like a long train journey; one where neither the pleasant, ever-changing view from the window, nor the good book I'd brought along could ever fully hold my attention. After a time I would inevitably find myself flitting between one thing and another, not achieving much of anything, just feeling the miles and the hours slip by.

I blamed this feeling in part on Lou, and the compost bin fiasco. Sure enough, the wood he built my compost bin from had been stolen, from various sites around the allotment. But the one who noticed and complained (loudly) was the normally quiet, contemplative plot-holder Jorge. I felt terrible about the situation, and in doing so my cherished feeling of allotment calm totally vanished. Jorge told me stories of Lou's thieving and scheming in great detail and I couldn't help but be both amused and alarmed by them. For a man in his eighties, Lou, it would seem, has an incredible amount of energy "He's not right in the head," Jorge surmised. "He's also drunk half the time, he's got to go..."

And go he did, though not without a fight, or a screaming match with Jorge. The committee voted him out, for as the sign on the gate of the allotment states 'THEFT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED'. This eviction process took six weeks, however. When questioned about the stolen wood used for my compost bin Lou replied "What wood? What compost bin? I never even built one!"

Despite being booted out, I hear Lou still comes around. Apparently he cut a hole in the chain link fence and hopped in at dusk one evening. He was seen leaving that night with two large bag fulls of... Who knows...

With his departure came the return of calm and of my vacationing fellow plot-holder, Mohammad . I was quietly weeding, listening to the radio when I heard "My friend! How are you?" It was wonderful to see his smiling face, tanned from spending the summer in Morocco with his family and grandchildren.

"I've missed you my friend!" he called. "I would like to give you a hug."

He motioned to me with his open arms. Hugging him, I smiled to myself, realising Autumn was upon us.