My wife, four children and I lived
in a tiny, two bedroomed house. We longed to move to a bigger home. After several years of waiting, a newly
refurbished council house was offered to us, in the heart of beautiful Peckham,
south east London. It was placed on a busy main road, right next to a popular
bus stop and had front and back gardens. Now when I say gardens, I mean two
areas of mud, with the odd weed poking out here and there. Or, as I have come
to realise not weeds, but rather lonely, unwanted plants growing in the
wrong place!
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| A YOUNG GRACE WITH OUR FIRST HARVEST |
It was the beginning of the year
when we moved in and very colda. As we
moved the last of our furniture inside, a heavy snow storm swirled outside. This
seemed great, for a day or two, as the lovely carpet of white covered up all the
horrible dirty, brown earth underneath. However, as the snow began to melt, the
patches of muddy earth looked even worse than before - like a soiled nappy
waiting to be changed.
Gazing out of the widow during
those first few weeks, it dawned on me that I had adopted a fifth child. A
child I had not reckoned on and was by no means prepared for. And, my new child
needed a home and a loving family. It was also going to need a great deal of love
and hard work bestowed upon it. It was going to cost money and take up a lot of
my time. I had to bring it up properly and make it fit and presentable for the
world.
The first thing I had to decide on
was whether I should start work on the front or the back garden first. The
natural thing would be to start on the front first, because that was an area which
people at the bus stop would see. It was
open to scrutiny. On the other hand, the back I could leave to another time and
it wouldn’t matter if it was a mess, because no one would see it. But would
this be a reflection of me? Was I more
interested in the outward appearance than the real me, the person that only my
family saw? Well I have to admit, that the shallow me, took the lead. The front
mud patch would be worked on first.
When you have a baby, especially
your first, you are showered with gifts, clothes, toys and advice on how to
feed and nurture the child. But when you have your very first garden, nothing
like that happens really, and you have to fend for yourself. Yes, you can read books on the subject, but
you don’t see mud patches like mine in books - you just see the beautiful
finished product. My patch needed clothing and it needed it fast, I didn’t want the people to stare from the
bus stop, shaking their heads at my patch, thinking to themselves “look at the
lack of love and neglect in that place:
maybe it should be taken away and given to someone else to care for. To
get started, I plumped for the cheapest option, with maximum effect. I decided to lay a lawn (the flower beds
would have to wait for now). But I had no tools, no spade, no rack, no watering
can or hose. Like I said nobody buys presents for the father of a new garden.
I allowed myself a day to prepare
the ground and a day to lay the grassy carpet tiles. Babies can have the nicest
of clothing, but they need to be fed constantly or they will fail. My grass
needed to be fed, it needed water and it needed lots of it, or it would dry up and
not take root. However, there was a hosepipe ban, which was a big problem, as
all I had was one newly purchased watering can and a bucket. For a week I was
like a very strict Park-Keeper.... “Mind the grass. Please don’t stand on it”. It was like a new
carpet and the kids were desperate to walk all over it. It was so tempting,
especially as it formed a short cut, avoiding the paths set out along three
sides of it. They found these much too tiresome, when they could easily walk
diagonally across my lovely green grass and take at least a whole second off
their journey time. You know, however much you try to steer children in the
right direction, they eventually choose their own path and this one went across
my grass!! I call it grass and not a lawn, because to me a lawn is something
you enjoy at Wimbledon, all soft and springy and exceedingly green and well
trimmed. Or you might find at some fancy country house, where it is roped off,
and to nice for plebs like me to walk on.
A solution to the problem was stepping
stones. I bought four (only four due to
financial constraints!), but I placed them at various points, in a sort of
squiggly diagonal, from gate to front door. They solved the problem perfectly.
The kids loved them, especially as they had pretty sunflowers on them. Gradually my new step child was starting to
get a character of its own.
The grass now sorted, it was time
to work on the flower beds. Money as usual, was the big issue. However we managed to find a decent and
varied selection of cheap shrubs and then planting got under way. As a modern
parent, who takes a keen interest in their education, of course I wanted the
children to get involved with their adopted sibling. But like most parents,
trying to get your kids interested in the things you like, is nigh on
impossible. It’s like getting your teenage son to like the same music you liked
when you were his age. “It’s not cool dad; someone might see me digging
outside. I might get dirty!” and “Gardens are for old people.” Sigh!
However, I pressed on, soon my
adopted child was starting to take their first steps at becoming established. I
knew I was on the right course when one day I heard a gruff voice call out,
from the bus stop “It’s looking good mate!”, I thought to myself “Who me? Are
you talking to me? What’s looking good? Is he trying to be funny? Am I showing my builder’s bum again?” “Yeah,
the garden, it’s looking nice. Oh here’s me bus, gotta go!” I was chuffed, maybe
I wasn’t such a bad parent after all.
As Easter and spring arrived, they
brought back to life many bulbs, which had been planted by the previous
‘squatters, and which had been hidden from view all winter. True to say the resurrection was here for
everyone to see. Where there seemed no
life or beauty, green shoots and flowers appeared from the earth, daffodils and
blue bells ringing their arrival. How quickly things had changed in only a
short period time. My new child was now on solids and experiencing a growing
spurt.
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| PRAWNEOUS INBATTERCUS |
One thing I was warned about, by
one or two scare mongers was “If you have a garden by a bus stop, people will
throw rubbish into it”. But I have to say they were right to a degree, but thankfully
the fall-out was nowhere near what they would have me to believe. I was
expecting discarded furniture, broken fridges and all that sort of thing. True
we did get the odd bottle of beer lobbed over, or soft drink cans but that was
all. However, the strangest thing, by far, which appeared in the garden, one
day, was what I believed to be a prawn ball (or to give its Latin name prawneous
inbattercus) which had originated from our local Chinese takeaway. But it didn’t lay on the ground, tucked under
one of the shrubs. Instead someone had
pushed it, firmly, onto one of the branches. I have never removed it - I just
left it there, and over the weeks it took on a fossil-like appearance, changing
colour and form, as the days, weeks and even months went by. And there it clung to the branch, enduring
rain, wind, hail, snow and sunshine. It made me wonder what in goes into those prawn balls? I have to admit that I haven’t eaten one
since.
One of my favourite flowers, which
I did plant and which has brought no end of pleasure, was the Rose of Sharon (a type of Hibiscus syriacus). It’s a very beautiful flower
– very pure and delicate. It even has a
link to biblical times, being mentioned in the book, The Song of Solomon.
Whether mine is the same as the flower mentioned there, I cannot say for sure
but, for arguments sake, let’s assume that it is. It held a great significance to me, as being
the first flower that grew in my garden and I wanted to take pictures of it. And
to quote....”Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” All
my children have been photographed, at every stage of their development, and
now I realised that here I was doing the same thing but this time using a Rose
as my subject. It was refreshing to discover that it even liked to be
photographed, didn’t have to be told to smile or tuck their shirts in.
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| THE ROSE OF SHARON |
But for all my small successes in
the front garden, there was still the back garden, the black tulip of the
family. This child was growing up a rebel, it was wild, and had to be
tamed. But what should I do? Could I
grow some vegetables? After all I was growing
prawn balls in the front garden, so why not vegetables at the back? At our
previous abode in our back yard I tried with the children to grow some carrots
in a container. Whatever we did they never grew properly. One night so not to
disappoint the children I bought some carrots with the green heads still on and
stuck them into the container so the kids had something to pull up. Thankfully
I never had to explain about why this variety of carrot grows so rapidly over
night, from just a small green shoot one day to a perfectly formed carrot the
next.
The garden area, to the rear of the
house, like the front, was in a terrible state. The only thing that had
sustained life was a vicious looking rose bush, with massive thorns. I realised
as I began to dig the soil through that this had been a sort of dumping ground
for the builders who had refurbished the house. It became like an
archaeological dig, where I discovered old tiles, water taps, bits of wood,
bricks, plastic soldiers, tin cans, bottles, cuddly toy and even a set of
handle bars from a child’s bike, complete with a bell. I expected Tony Robinson
to turn with the Time Team. To remedy
the poor state of the soil, I proceeded to scatter some fish, blood, bone and
fertiliser (all purchased from the pound shop). Except for the blood that is,
that was mine from trying to prune the vicious Rose bush!
But now I was ready for sowing my
first crop. Like all first children, I decided to buy a baby book to record my
child’s progress, the first lock of grass and that sort of thing. I recorded
each set of seeds, where and when I planted them and when I should expect to
see them materialise and harvest. Sure enough as the weeks and months past, edible
produce began to appear. They weren’t the biggest, best or nicest looking
vegetable you had ever seen, but they were vegetable nonetheless. Many did fall
by the wayside, victims of a nasty slimy creature called the slug. Not just one
slug but a whole army of them. Where did they come from? How did they get here?
Could they fly? Were they related to the vampire family, only coming out at
night to prey on their victims?
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| MONTY DON BEWARE |
I can remember purchasing a box of
baby lettuces all ready to plant out. But, within a couple of days they were
completely gone; literally eaten alive. One can only imagine the fear that
gripped these baby lettuce, as a slow moving slimy army slithered towards them and
then sucked the life out of them.
One vegetable which sticks out as a
success story, but for all the wrong reasons is the humble runner bean. It was
recommended to me as being easy to grow, with a high yield. What I didn’t
consider though, was that I actually don’t like runner beans. And nor does my wife (who likes more
vegetables then anyone I know). As for the kids liking them that was none
starter. Maybe if I grew my own runner beans, I might start to like them; they
would taste nicer. The kids might even start to like them, if I coated them in
chocolate and pass them off as Chocolate Brazils. Or another trick would be to cut
them up so small that they became unrecognisable in a stew. The yield was so high in fact I didn’t know
what to do with them all. There was only so many I could freeze. You can’t even
give them away as we found out. One neighbour took some, probably out of
politeness. But when I said “if you want some more just knock” they never came
back.
I did come up with a brilliant plan
to rid us of all these unwanted runner beans. After watching an episode of
River Cottage, I tied the beans up in small bunches, accompanied with a some
herbs we were also growing and a rustic labelling which said “Free runner
beans, grown in Peckham”. I felt smugly optimistic. Then I neatly placed the green parcels, on
the garden fence, next to bus stop, and waited and waited and waited, until it
got embarrassing. Not one person from
the diverse community of Peckham would partake. After several hours, I
sheepishly retrieved the unwanted beanies, which now looked decidedly shrivelled
and sad. I bet Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall doesn’t have this problem, I
pondered. In a desperate attempt, I
placed them at the entrance to the local park. Thankfully, they were all gone
the next day, but where to, I cannot say. Maybe Mrs Fox is trying force feed
her cubs with them.
It has been four years now since my
adopted child entered my life and, like bringing up any child, there have been
highs and lows. At times, I have shown neglect and it’s all been too much and
you feel like a rubbish parent. But, on the whole, it has been a privilege and
an honour. What a wonder to experience the miracle of life. How you can have a bulb or seed, and to all
intents and purposes, it seems dead and lifeless and yet, when you put it into
the ground, cover it with earth and rotted dead stuff (aka compost) in a short
time it comes back to life and turns into a beautiful flower or something you
can eat (runner beans being the exception to the rule, of course!). Then the
following year you start the whole process all over again. I am reminded of a
verse from the New Testament, the Apostle Paul wrote “I have planted, Apollos
watered; but God gave the increase.
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