Low Light / First Frost

The allotment in Hampstead is completely outdoors. On one side there’s a shed with solar panels, but that can barely power the lightbulb, let alone heat the place up. So I regularly freeze. And the last fortnight has been scuppered by rain. Today there was a low, bright sun. I got to the allotment to meet Scarlett and the ground was covered in frost. She was very surprised because it’s the first time she’s been out when the sun has been too low to touch any of the frost on her patch. It was intact when I arrived – shards of it glittering on the pea shoots and the beautiful manure piles – and it was still there when we left. I did my first job – digging along the bank, to get rid of some particularly long, slimy roots that would shoot up again unless weeded. Apparently I have good technique and avoided digging holes. I understand the term ‘back breaking’ now, as well; though we were only working for an hour or so, I could feel the strain and wondered how on earth people did this every day, for several hours a day, for their entire lives. A scene in Tess of the D’Urbevilles comes to mind, when she begins to understand the meaning of being ‘wet through’:

They worked on hour after hour, unconscious of the forlorn aspect they bore in the landscape, not thinking of the justice or injustice of their lot. Even in such a position as theirs it was possible to exist in a dream. In the afternoon the rain came on again, and Marian said that they need not work any more. But if they did not work they would not be paid; so they worked on. It was so high a situation, this field, that the rain had no occasion to fall, but raced along horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them like glass splinters till they were wet through. Tess had not known till now what was really meant by that. There are degrees of dampness, and a very little is called being wet through in common talk. But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of rain-water, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then at back, front, and sides, and yet to work on till the leaden light diminishes and marks that the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum of stoicism, even of valour.

The more I go, the more I realise how ignorant I am about vegetables, and this is coming from a vegetarian. Every now and then Scarlett would get excited and point to a tiny shoot, far, far away and name it, explain it, tell me when it was likely to bloom properly, how many seasons she’s been growing it, what variety it was… It’s astonishing and humbling. We’re standing in one of the poshest areas in London, where, less than twenty metres away is a giant house with several beautiful cars parked outside. Down the hill is a long street which has Starbuck’s and Carluccio’s, and down an alley a very twee christmas market with the requisite fairy lights and appropriately dressed children. The allotment, on the other hand, is unlit, freezing and beginning to look quite bare. Scarlett pointed out where the onions would be planted (in blocks, not rows) and where the potatoes would go, all in the rapidly fading light. Contrary to the commercial season we’re in, the ground is soft and dark. Things are dying. Plants that should have been harvested are perishing in the frost. Abundance & Merriment versus Black Soil & Silence. .