Swamp Parsnips

It stopped raining on Saturday morning.  F cleared some of the garden around the beehives while it was still too cold for my bees to come out, and then piled me into the HGV and drove us up to the allotment.

We were the only living things in sight - that should have told her something but she didn't give up and go home.

Her boots sank into the garden and she nearly left one stuck there - that should have told her something too but she still didn't give up and go home.

We shifted a big old rhubarb.  We planted some tuber things she called artichokes.  We dived into the shed when rain showers passed over.  And then she dug up all the parsnips.  If it wasn't boring by then it might have been funny.  There she was fishing around in the swamp for long white pointy things covered in thick sticky mud.

I tried to stop her.  I stood on the toes of her boots.  I tried to sit on the bits that she was about to go digging in, but she is very persistent.  In the end I sat on the neighbour's concrete greenhouse foundations and watched from there - at least it was a mud-free space.

I know they are long white pointy things because after the digging was the scrubbing; (buckets full of water fetched from a square tank on Lyn's allotment - fooled me - I nearly jumped into it when she opened the lid - whoops that would have been a disaster) and parsnips emerged from all the mud and mess that she had piled up on the edge of the plot.


The real problem came when I realized I was going to have to share the HGV on the way home with some of her parsnip harvest.  B****y parsnips!

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