A Glimpse Of Newt

The Leaky Pond

I think the small pond on my plot is leaking. Last week I topped it up with 240 litres of water (that's 24 watering cans worth; and a lot of tottering to and from the watering tank) yet yesterday I saw that the water level had dropped again to just a couple of inches. Why could this be happening? Bull rushes grow in the pond alongside water mint, speedwells and ornamental grass. 'Could they just be using all the water?' I wondered. It seemed unlikely, but I thinned the plants out to a third and then paused before starting to refill the pond: I had seen a rapid movement in the water.

I'd been looking out for the newts as I worked but thought that maybe they'd been and gone, business completed. Peering into the pond I spotted a small frog, wide eyed and cautious, one rubbery hand gripping a green stalk for stability.

I topped the pond up with water, bucket fulls of it, putting in a small exit ramp for the newts, just in case they were still about; and over the course of the early evening I watched the water level sink slowly down, along with the summer sunlight.

A New Day

Some Velvet Morning

An ugly mass of black fly, as thick as velvet, has settled on the Cardoons. As a result, ladybirds are on overdrive, settling in for the long stay. As I watch them go about their business of feeding on these ebony interlopers, fighting, feuding, getting to know each other a little better, it feels like I'm viewing a scene from a Frontier town on a Saturday night. The ladybirds' backs glow bright and glossy, as if in moonlight, as they stagger around, from stem to flower petal, like a gang of gaily-attired drunks.

In places the black fly are so thick that all plant detail is lost; silvery Cardoon leaf and stem smothered by their powdery black bodies. I think of aging flock wallpaper, when the velvet print begins to fade and flake and see these patterns in the stricken plants before me.

I go to the shed and return with a paintbrush and a bottle of BUG-BE-GONE. For the next hour or so I brush off all the black fly I can, carefully avoiding the bright clusters of yellow eggs I hope will survive to become the new lady bird brawlers, out on the town...

That wonderful Bird Table Book...

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.

Frost damage.

A harsh unexpected frost a few weeks ago has wiped out the fruiting plants on the plot. Tiny blackened plums, wizened burnt-orange gooseberries and shrivelled currants litter the ground. Skeletal clusters of grapes, blackened on the vine, are like charcoal scrawls against the pale sky, dead sweet peas rattle in the breeze, bleached white as beach flotsam.

It's what happens.

My friend Mohammad raises his eyes to the heavens and says, "This is the way - it's nature." He takes me on a little tour of his plot to show me the damage to his trees. "The apple's OK, the plum maybe not so. Just a few, look here," he points, "to the top" where I can see a branch with a few good sized fruits forming. We weave through the vegetable beds, stepping around cabbages and over seedlings until we reach his cherry tree. He smiles and presents it with a small theatrical flourish. It has a simple, heavy black steel frame erected around it which is shaped like a giant staple and draped from the top bar is a builders green mesh sheet. This swaddles the tree and is tied around the trunk, nipped in like a dress at the waist. Through the open weave of the fabric I can see the tree inside is covered in fruit. Every branch. He gives me a serious look and nods, "The birds, we'll beat them this year, no?"