Sunday 12th June 2016.

Utopias B4a B4b B4c - 10th June 2016

From some slimy hole in the golden acres of the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular 

My efficacy as a chronicler of the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular leaves a lot to be desired. At this time of writing, putting pen to paper and dirt encrusted fingers to computer keys; nearly 70 days have elapsed since the last scant virtual rendition of the garden.

Since those few select mega value moments from the planting of Cara and Sarpo Mira seed potatoes so much else has emerged, come to be, and gone, from the overwhelming momentum of the allotment garden. Why have there been so few despatches from me when so much has happened? It is not that I have not been there often to witness and play a part in the bewildering and beguiling emanations of the garden.

Utopia B4a - Cara potatoes - 10th June 2016

I have made it to the site on 50 of those 70 days; each visit involving a 14 mile round cycle trip and at least 2 hours of gardening on working weekday evenings (and many more otherwise). In the great seasonal reach for the sun, everything growing and stretching, swelling, and aching for more light, water and energy, I think and feel I am there, that I am truly a part of it, an empathetic soul immersed in the entwined romance and reason of the place. And when apart from the place physically there is still a connection in thought. Should I celebrate my energetic and determined immersion by reporting on what I (and others) have done let alone thought and felt? Celebrating our actions might lack a critical and reflective perspective on many dimensions of the garden and our gardening.

10th May - bitter Sweet Pepper

The mighty potato patches of the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular (in June) invite a certain optimism as to the harvest later in the year – the haulms in their precipitous standing suggest success. For every seed potato shoot that has reached so high with as much vigour, so many others, of various plant sorts and species, have barely made it out of the ground. Great processions of e.g. parsnip seedlings have disappeared in their entirety overnight. Of course I think I know what the cause of their disappearance is. I may not have actually witnessed ‘the slug’ devouring those seedlings but I am certain ‘it’ is responsible – the vile villain of the parsnip patch, and of many other plant communities making up the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular.

The many ways of 'the slug' 

in 

the golden acres

of

the allotment garden

of 

Nowhere

in 

particular

7th June 2016

This insatiable bête noire, this bête de nuit, has brought me to my knees in gloom filled resignation as to the futility of sowing some plant seeds directly into the soil. The ravaged remains of plants brought on in pots and transplanted out inspire a bitter sentiment. My gloom has festered. Of my 50 visits, many have continued into the gloaming and beyond, in order for me to search out and destroy as much of ‘the slug’ as I can – a crazed nocturnal mission involving scissors and stamping; summary execution. The body of ‘the slug’ is pulverised into near oblivion; but only something near oblivion for ‘the slug’ is inextirpable. I have exercised some restraint as to my ‘slugicidal’ zeal and acknowledged ‘the slug’ has a place in the whole being of the garden. ‘The slug’ is not malevolent. I have sought out my very own inner slug as a means to try and identify with the way of the slug in the harmonious connectivity of the great Tree of Life, no less. In this meditation on the potential of peaceful coexistence in the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular I am as much ‘the pest’ not least because of how I exercise the limits of my gardening knowledge, skills and understanding and inflict them on the garden.

Grow fat hen not chervil - 18th May.

‘The way of the slug’ may involve adjustments to the rational and romantic dimensions of the garden (and gardener) making for a less anthropocentric dream of Utopia. But still, in an anthropocentric nightmare of Utopia 4a, 4b and 4c, I can hear the delicate mouthparts of myriad molluscs burrowing into the starchy tuberous flesh of Solanum tuberosum L. making for a grim chorus of rasping radulae mocking my ecological and horticultural magnanimity. In the slug garden of Nowhere in particular, the potato chips are down, down, down and riven with holes to boot.