There are lakes on all the allotments around the one that F has been digging in. I have been there with her on two occasions this week. I supervised from inside the greenhouse - which is also standing in a lake, but has platforms to keep me above water level. She used a snipper thing on a long pole to cut some branches off a willow tree that casts a lot of shade on our allotment. It might have been someone's clever idea a few years ago to plant a willow to soak up water. In summer it dries out the ground around it to concrete consistency, and throws deep shade on the surrounding allotments.
Unfortunately it is on the allotment of someone who has rather artistic ideas about what an allotment is; some one who has adorned the tree with all sorts of ironmongery, and covered the surrounding area (in which she can grow nothing of food value to humans) with what might loosely be described as sculptures, collections of caste-off household items, broken furniture, plastic plant pots, broken glass (from her own greenhouse) and assortments of wooden planks and metal stakes....rotting, rusting, bent, broken.
In other words we garden in the shadow of a mess.
With no one at all around, F reached into the tree (which is right on the boundary of the two allotments) and cut a fair percentage of it away. The council had pollarded it a few years ago but no one had tackled it since then and the effect had only been to increase exponentially the number of stems that have sprouted from the shortened branches, and deepen the shade it casts in the summer time.
I think, somehow, that we had better hide the evidence.
Today Mr B and F went cycling westward and brought me back some pictures to illustrate her plans for repurposing our neighbouring lakes. I'm not keen. Those avian creatures look large and potentially mean. That particular body of water was used to provide power to a mill for grain. We have grown grain in the past but I suspect our new smaller allotment won't have room for that so there will be no point to a mill pond at the allotments.
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| Geese: We heard once that some distillery in Scotland uses them to guard the premises. That makes them scarier than k9s. |
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| Mill Pond, Funtington, Hants |
Your neighbouring allotment looks more like a civic amenity site ( aka: dump). What a waste.
ReplyDeleteI would keep well clear of those geese. I was once attacked by a mean goose and still have the bruises on my calves!
We wouldn't mind if the rest of it grew anything other than elaborate weeds. Sorry to read you had a nasty encounter with a goose. They are all mean in our experience.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Ballantine's Distillery and their 'Scotch Watch' gaggle; disbanded in 2012 after quite some length of service. Just along the Clyde here at Dumbarton. As for the tree lopping - if the same applies on allotments as does boundary fences on gardens, then one has the right to remove all greenery that enters on one's own side of said boundary, without fear or favour. That's not to say the neigbour will be chuffed... ridding oneself of the evidence might be a challenge. I don't think green willow burns particularly well. Basket making perhaps? A new huddle for you in that green house, Tigger dear! Hugs and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx
Basketry, what a great idea. We might just give that a try. We will have to split some of them down a bit.
DeleteGeese are the best guard dogs. We had them out back and no one was brave enough to go in.
ReplyDeleteThat is a lot of water. Looks like my back yard during the start of summer.
I’m glad your trimming the willow. Your going to need the sunshine to grow lots of yummy food
Geese are scary. We had some when I (F) was a kid, and I never went into our pond paddock without an adult around.
DeleteGeese were used as night guardians in ancient Rome. Between the racket and the attacking, you don't want geese at you, they were evidently very effective. What's with all the water? Is it flooding or just a normal swamp? Odd place for allotments.
ReplyDeleteLots of rain, heavy clay, poorly drained soil, people have lowered the level of some plots by repeated scalping of weeds and top soil.... As for geese, they can break human leg bones with their wings (it is said). They don't like intruders in their territory. Frankly the look and sound of them hissing at you with their beaks wide open and necks extended is enough to make normal people run away. Clearly the Romans thought so too.
DeleteWhat a shame to read about your allotment neighbour. I'm sure there must be others around who would love the chance to create a garden there.
ReplyDeleteGood for F for trimming. Hopefully she very quickly removed the evidence. 'I know nothing' and you can't prove otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThere's an awful lot of water on the allotment. Glad you can keep your paws dry
if I were there, Tigger, I would co captain with you on no large fowl allowed. Having been chased and attacked several times as a child, I have no love for Roosters, Geese, Male Turkey Gobbler or Male Peacoks. yes, Geese are great guards, the make horrid loud noise and peck with beaks and beat with their wings... what a shame all that junk is piled there. I would think the allotments would have rules to follow, but maybe there is no one to enforce them..
ReplyDeleteThe allotments do have rues but if anyone enforced them we wouldn't have an allotment (because our acquisition of a plot to garden was against the rules). Therefore, we stay pretty quiet about enforcement of rules, and we need to hide the evidence that we cut the tree in case it draws attention to our activity there. If anyone asks, we are helping the allotment holder who is having some health problems at present. People who have had plots more than 4 years know us, and know Ronnie (from whom we have the plot) and just wink.
DeleteWe have nothing against a bit of improvised garden art, or nature gardening (which is what the neighbour claims to be into), but not sure that allotments are necessarily the best place to be promoting slugs and inedible plants (known by some as pests and weeds). We built bug and bee hotels ourselves and will do so again so maybe we can find some common ground with our neighbour.
ReplyDeleteRaised beds Tigger to improve the drainage? I enjoy your allotment tails/tales so much. Great photos.
ReplyDeleteWe don't bother Dave. By early summer the water table will have dropped several feet (out of reach) and the soil will be like concrete, so we just add as much organic material as we can lay our hands on - stables, seaweed, straw, leaves, compost, sweepings from the hairdressers, rake up the grass outside the gates when the common land gets mowed by the council (we are the only ones that collect and use it), even shredded paper and cardboard gets laid on top and or dug in. We just keep laying stuff on top and planting through it. Eventually the soil structure improves and all that organic stuff acts like a sponge to keep the water evenly distributed in the soil rather than sitting on top of hard compacted clay with no air spaces in it - and that retained moisture also doesn't escape quite so quickly when the warmth returns to the season. Plants soak it up too (as well as taking up minerals to stop water leaching them downward and out of reach), so we try to leave stuff growing in our allotment over the winter if we can - green manure, field beans, clover etc. and then dig it in come Spring.
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