A Green Granny's Garden by Fionna Hill

Author:Fionna Hill [Hill, Fionna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9311-2
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The weather is spring-like and lovely. Peas are not a veggie that I am crazy about, since nothing compares with Mum and Dad’s fresh ones. Shops often sell peas that have been left to become fat in the wrinkled pods and are in fact mealy, tough and horrible. However, I have masses of leftover microgreen pea seeds, and decide to soak some and throw them in the garden. Corn salad seedlings are now growing merrily under one of the cloches. I also plant the balance of my newly bought seeds — strawberry spinach, American upland cress, summer savory, epazote, Paris White cos and Sylvia lettuces, Greenheart Orange calendula. The komatsuna (mustard spinach) I planted about 10 days ago is up. Komatsuna is actually neither mustard nor spinach. I have read that ‘The tender dark green glossy leaves have a distinct flavour between mustard and cabbage, with a hint of spinach, but with little pungency.’ I plan to use them as a salad green.

I had noticed a little white pill on top of the glass cloche in my veggie allotment a couple of days before, but thought it was a lone hot peppermint. I didn’t see any others, or take much notice. But when I arrive for our weekly community gardening session this Sunday, Anna greets me and says there is ‘an issue’. A police emergency barrier has been tied to rubbish bins across the entry to our community gardens. Masses of the garden have tiny white pills strewn over the earth. A member of the local church congregation had gone into the veggie gardens for their weekly Sunday walk, saw the white pills all over the earth and reported it to the vicar. The vicar phoned the police, who came and took away samples for analysis and cordoned off our gardens!

Anna thinks that Pierre may have been the donor (and not told us): the pills seem to have been selectively sprinkled mostly on communal ground, not on individual plots. Jesus has calculated the value if it is P — big bucks. We wonder if Bob the scarecrow has been up to mischief in the middle of the night; he does look as though he has been up to some fairly energetic activities. His dropped stomach could of course be failed liposuction, a hernia or just beer, rather than illicit ventures. His neck has further extended, and now his collar and tie have slipped, and his ankles sort of hang over his galoshes and virtually drag on the ground.

Pierre hasn’t shown up, so we can’t ask him if he knows what happened. We decide not to garden near the pills, so do selective duties while skirting around the white mischief in our normally peaceful little haven. My garden has escaped, so I can poke and prod as usual. After a couple of hours, we take a vote on whether we should gather up the substance; after a lot of discussion, only one person elects to do so, more theories and gossip surface, and then on a re-vote we decide to gather up.

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