2020 Covid-19 Memories

Cath Shearing, Carrick Knowe Allotments

With time to linger ....

It is my first year on this plot and I am very fortunate that lockdown afforded me the extra time and opportunity to really get to know the plot's character. It's seed bank and soil, the rhythm of passing trains and the inherited fruit trees and bushes. The wobbly fence posts, leaning shed and the misaligned gate latch that are all still delivering provided I showed them respect  and learn to work with them.

My most memorable  visits to the plot were made in the early evenings in May and early June. Despite the challenge of an exceptionally hot and dry spring the established plants still did their thing.  On several evenings  I simply sat on the ground between the comfrey and the raspberry patches and marvelled at the bees working the flowers as they are destined to do.  The subsequent material benefit for me  was of course fully pollinated and well shaped raspberries, but there was also something  deeper that held me there much longer than I would have expected. 

The relationship between flowers and pollinators is much heralded and in my opinion rightly so. My own evening pollinator experiences have led me to ask  what other amazing  inter-dependencies are happening on my plot that are not so readily witnessed but are equally precious. Included in that, I suppose, is the critter that took all my gooseberries!