On the raised bedtime story of
the polytunnel of love(?) supreme....
The main growing season in the polytunnel finished last week so I decided to start rebuilding and rearranging the raised beds in there. The task has been hard work physically and made harder by a multitude of ants that nest in the various warm and dry niches the tunnel interior provides. At the outset the ants were, because of my digging, out in full force. They teamed over me and bit me furiously. In my mind I still want the place to be ‘The Polytunnel of Love Supreme’ however at my feet, ankles, and higher, a painful struggle for dominance, as yet unfinished and unresolved, expresses a coexistence a lot less accommodating and harmonious than my conceit of a ‘love supreme’.
4th October
The polytunnel has been in situ for approximately fourteen years. The length of the tunnel lies on an east-west axis hence it has a south facing aspect. The raised beds inside were established across the width of the tunnel, with narrow paths between and a long, tunnel length path to one end of the beds. Movement within this arrangement, especially at the height of the growing season, was awkward. There was insufficient path width and space to move large wheelbarrow loads of materials between the beds. The plants grew over the edges of the beds across the paths making some areas difficult to access without damaging those plants. Watering was difficult. Taller, climbing, rambling plants overwhelmed and shaded neighbouring plants as well as hindered through ventilation when the doors at each end were opened on very hot summer days. The raised beds closest to the doors dried out very quickly because they got more air than the raised beds at the centre of the polytunnel. Our cramped and awkward polytunnel organisation, combined with very high temperatures and the biting ants, made for an oppressive gardening experience. The polytunnel became a no go zone sometimes. How then was this dysfunctional and impracticable environment conceived of as, ‘The Polytunnel of Love Supreme’?
8th October
Back in late Spring 2013 I was enraptured by the play of evening light on the climbing beans as they emerged from the then fresh and recently applied compost of the raised beds. The plants ascended and entwined a medley of improvised support lines. The lines were the staves and the leaves and stems were the notes; altogether they made for a rhapsodic chorus in green. Was the music to my eyes a synaesthetic rendition of ‘A Love Supreme’? Perhaps not, but the fanciful thought was enough to warrant a new name for the polytunnel as a sort of homage to John Coltrane and an acceptance of the difficulties to come. The imaginary musical notation of, ‘The Polytunnel of Love Supreme’, served as an enjoyable, if not worthy, immersion in the idea of someone hearing the music of this place; a what if moment.
John Coltrane’s manuscript for the ‘ground-breaking’ ‘A Love Supreme’ is available to view online here. It shows an eloquent roughness in his creative thought processes as they are put down on paper. What was committed to paper that was essential and needed in order to create his much celebrated music? There are more refined notations of, ‘A Love Supreme’ available to view online including this one here. Later, in the summer, my musical rapture was disturbed by a familiar physical sensation of numerous little jaws biting into me, piercing the fantasy transcendence with some very down to earth notes of discord. Digging the dream of all garden paths leading to a supreme love has faltered at the ground breaking acknowledgement of a very different consciousness (red not green?) emanating from the darker nooks, crannies and niches of the polytunnel.
9th October
Why are the ants undermining the blissful stability of my polytunnelling dreams? An acknowledgement and understanding of the intricacy of their societies may lead to a resolution. In, ‘The Lives of Ants’, Laurent Keller and Elisabeth Gordon introduce a roll call of eminent scientists, legendary philosophers and other greats to establish the scale and complexity of the task of understanding ants. The roll call includes, in the first few pages alone, William Morton Wheeler, Aelian, Ovid, Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, La Fontaine, King Solomon, Pliny the Elder, Amma, Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, William Gould, Edward O Wilson and Bert Holldobler. In my polytunnelling fantasy, these people could be the members of a myrmecological dream team. I will volunteer my services as the expedition mule and carry their collected works for easy reference in the field. In, ‘Journey to the Ants’, O Wilson and Holldobler say ants ‘are the premier predators, scavengers and turners of the soil in the forests of Finland’. In my role as allotment gardener (when not being a mule or an ass) I have considered myself as a candidate for the premier predator, scavenger and turner of the soil – here at the edge of Epping Forest. I know my conceit smacks of environmentally incorrect supremacism. What an ass!
10th October
Our journey to the bad ant-lands finds us in the arid western reaches of what was, ‘The Polytunnel of Love Supreme’. Tremendous upheavals and relatively vast excavations have taken place. Some new raised beds have appeared and they ‘run along’ the length of the tunnel rather than across it. Some of the soil has been scorched and baked dry to a virtual dust. I believe this temporary wasteland is the territory of the ant tribe, Myrmicini, and, in particular, the species, Myrmica rubra, a notably aggressive member of the sub family, Myrmicinae. I could be wrong. After all what does a dumb ass mule know? Other red ant species in the UK include, M.lonea, M.ruginodis, M.sabuleti, M.scabrinodis, M.schencki, M.specioides, M.sulcinodis and M.vandeli. This could be the renegade cast list of a rather odd spaghetti western – ‘The Maleficent Nine’ – but I need to keep on the gardening path and consider the place of ants in this small and specific section of landscape.
11th October
Could the red ants be among the premier turners of the soil in the polytunnel and elsewhere on the allotment? If ants forage for and eat pollen are they also significant pollinators? I have seen them inside and around many flowers on the furthest flung branches of the poly-tunnel flora; the seasonal inflorescence of all those springtime notes. A celery plant we allowed to grow up large and tall, to flower and go to seed, attracted many ants. How many ant colonies are resident in the polytunnel and is it actually possible to get rid of them? There is some speculation as to the biomass of the world population of ants outweighing that of human beings. What is the biomass of ants on our site? Are we human allotment gardeners a lesser mass? My anthropomorphism as to the fury of the ants when defending their nests may be an inappropriate projection, and a flawed emotional basis on which to judge their belonging. If the polytunnel is (just?) a machine for growing plants in, is judging our belonging just a matter of weighing up utilitarian pros and cons? I tried to ‘ee-aw’ (mule-speak) my questions to the rest of the dream team however they disappeared down a raised bedside hole before I could make myself understood.
So far I have dug up a few of the old raised beds and broken the ground of some of the old paths and in so doing disturbed and dispersed a great number of ants. I wonder if and how they will recover their unity and what will be lost if they don’t. And what of the other polytunnel constituents, including the lost myrmecological dream team? I have made a resolution to complete the changes before the end of November. My resolution may enable a variety of winter crops and green manures to be cultivated in order to help improve the soil – and hopefully, by the next main growing season, the polytunnel (plants and ants included) will be playing and singing a new and more transcendent version of a love supreme.
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