Grandpa Ned's Allotment by Susan H Trought (beach read txt) 📕

Grandpa Ned was writing a letter.
‘Who are you writing to?’ asked Patsy.
‘I’m writing to the council,’ replied Grandpa Ned.
‘What for?’ asked Patsy.
‘I’m applying for an allotment,’ said Grandpa Ned.
‘What’s an allotment?’ asked Patsy.
‘Well,’ said Grandpa Ned, and sat back in his chair. ‘Me and your Granma Gladys haven’t got much of a garden here. We’ve only got a back yard, so I’m writing to the council to see if I can rent a garden - or and allotment , as they call it.’
‘But where would you put it?’ asked Patsy, looking doubtfully through the window into the small, enclosed yard.
‘We wouldn’t put it anywhere, silly,’ smiled Grandpa Ned. ‘The council will have a spare bit of land and they’ll share it out into lots of little gardens for people like us who haven’t got one.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Patsy. ‘Where will it be?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Grandpa Ned. ‘We’ll have to wait until the council reply to this letter.’
Every night when Patsy went round to see Grandpa Ned and Grandma Gladys she asked if the council had written, but each time Grandpa Ned shook his head.
One evening in early march, however, Grandpa Ned was waiting at the front door when Patsy turned the corner. He had a big smile on his face and an envelope in his hand. He waved it to Patsy who ran down the road towards him.
‘Is it from the council?’ she asked breathlessly and Grandpa Ned nodded.
The council had written to tell him that they had a vacant allotment in Lincoln Road, which was not very far from where Grandpa Ned lived. The only problem was that it had been sadly neglected and it was very overgrown with lots of nettles and rubbish on it. Unfortunately, it was the only one they had left.
‘I don’t know, Ned,’ said Grandma Gladys when she read the letter. ‘You don’t want to have all the bother of clearing it all up at your age.’
‘Pish woman!’ he had said. ‘I’ve nothing else to do with my days now that I’ve retired and you’re always saying that I’m under your feet at home all day.’
‘Mmm, that’s true,’ she agreed. ‘But don’t you go doing too much. You’ll put your back out!’
‘I’ll have young Patsy to help me,’ he said and went to water the tub of geraniums which was the only garden he had.
The next evening Grandpa Ned took Patsy on the seat of his bike down to Lincoln Road to have a look at their allotment.
They went down a narrow path and cane to a rickety gate. Grandpa Ned pushed it open and Patsy held it while he wheeled his bike inside.
There were quite a few people working on their allotments. Most of them stopped and smiled and said, ‘Good evening,’ to Grandpa Ned and Patsy who skipped along at his side.
‘Where’s allotment number 6?’ Grandpa Ned asked a man who was having a rest, leaning on his spade and smoking his pipe.
‘Oh, you’re the new tenant are you?’ said the man. ‘I wondered who would be taking over now that Alf has moved away.’ He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed with it down the path. ‘You’ll find it right at the end, next to that shed,’ he said. ‘It’ll need a lot of work.’
Patsy ran down the path and stopped at the shed. Grandpa Ned took big strides and son caught up with her.
‘Where is it?’ she asked.
‘I reckon this must be it,’ replied Grandpa Ned, scratching his head.
A lady in dirty overalls, who was on her knees planting some seeds, looked up when she heard their voices. ‘Hello,’ she said and smiled.
‘Is this number 6?’ asked Grandpa Ned, dubiously.
‘It is indeed,’ replied the lady. ‘Are you the new tenants?’ But before they could reply she went on, ‘I do hope so because the weeds from number 6 keep overflowing onto my allotment and I can hardly keep pace with them.’
Grandpa Ned looked at her immaculate allotment with its orderly rows of early cabbages and little bits of silver paper strung onto string over some newly set seed to frighten the birds away.
‘Yours looks all right to me,’ he said.
‘Yes it is,’ she replied. ‘But it’s such hard work you know....’ She glanced over at allotment number 6. ‘You’ve got your work cut out to get that into some sort of order,’ she added.
Grandpa Ned followed her gaze and nearly changed his mind until he looked down and saw patsy’s shining face.
‘Can we walk on it, Grandpa Ned?’ she asked excitedly.
‘I suppose so,’ he said smiling. ‘It is our allotment, after all.’
Later that night, as he and Grandma Gladys sat by the fire drinking their cocoa, Grandpa Ned said, ‘There’s an awful lot of work to do at that allotment, Gladys.’
‘Don’t you go taking on too much now, Ned she replied.
‘I’ll get it cleared somehow,’ he muttered. ‘I know, I’ll get a skip!’
‘What on earth good is a ship?’ exclaimed Grandma Gladys. ‘We’re miles from the sea!’
‘Not a ‘ship’ woman, a ‘skip’!’ laughed Grandpa Ned. ‘It’s like a big dustbin that a lorry brings so that you can fill it up with all sorts of rubbish and then the lorry comes back and takes it all away again.’
‘Well, like I say,’ continued grandma Gladys. ‘Don’t you go taking on too much.’
‘No dear,’ sighed Grandpa Ned and smiled.
Two days later, Grandpa Ned and patsy were ready waiting at their allotment at 6pm when the lorry arrived and deposited a big yellow skip right at the edge of their overgrown patch.
‘I’ll be back for it next week!’ called the driver as he drove away.
‘Where should we start?’ asked patsy.
‘That’s a good question,’ laughed Grandpa Ned. ‘It’s a good job we bought a second hand wheelbarrow. We’ll start by filling that.’
Evening after evening, Grandpa Ned and Patsy worked hard, filling the wheelbarrow and trundling it up a plank they had leant against the side of the skip.
When he got home at night Grandpa Ned ached all over so he had a hot bath while grandma Gladys tutted over him, repeating again and again how she thought he was overdoing it.
Patsy and Grandpa Ned gradually came to know the other allotment holders. There was Mr Smythe, the man with the pipe at number 2, who seemed to enjoy just leaning on his spade and talking to anyone who would listen and Mr Briggs at number 3 who only grew rhubarb.
Mrs Allen was the lady with the allotment next to theirs and they soon learnt that she talked nonstop, often without seeming to take a breath.
Patsy got to know Mr and Mrs Williams and their two children Susie and Peter, who had a double allotment near the gate.
Slowly, bit by bit, allotment number 6 began to take shape.
The lorry came to take the skip away. ‘My word! You’ve been busy!’ said the driver. ‘what an improvement since last week!’
Patsy and Grandpa Ned stood admiring all their hard work.
‘Right,’ said Grandpa Ned, rubbing his hand together. ‘Tomorrow night we can start digging.’
‘Can I plant some seeds?’ asked Patsy hopefully.
‘Not just yet,’ said Grandpa Ned. ‘We have to dig it all over first and then make the top soil very fine before we plant any seeds.’ He had been reading a lot of gardening books recently.
Seeing her disappointed face, Grandpa Ned smiled kindly and said, ‘I’ll tell you what, little snippet, you can buy some seed tomorrow and we can plan where we’re going to put them all.’
‘Hooray!’ shouted Patsy and ran up the path to tell Susie and Peter that at last they were going to have a proper allotment.
‘I must say,’ began Mrs Allen on her knees again with a trowel in her hand. ‘That you and young Patsy have worked wonders already with that allotment.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Grandpa Ned. ‘But we’ve only just begun.’
Patsy bought nasturtium seeds because they had lovely bright colours on the packet, phlox seeds because Mr Smythe had told her that they smelt nice and sunflower seeds because she knew that they would grow even taller than Grandpa Ned. For her vegetable patch she bought lettuce, peas and radishes because the man at the garden centre told her that they grew quickly.
After a few days of hard digging the allotment was at last ready for planting.
Grandpa Ned had bought some bean seeds so he made a kind of wigwam out of bamboo canes like he had seen in his gardening book, so that the beans could twine themselves up and round as they grew. He cheated a little and bought baby cabbage and cauliflower seedlings, but he did plant a long straight row of carrot seeds.
He put special growbags with tiny tomato plants in them next to the fence.
Patsy planted her seeds very carefully in rows as Grandpa Ned had shown her. She put the flowers at the front of the allotment near the path so that everyone could see how pretty they were. The she planted her vegetable seeds in long straight rows behind them.
Grandpa Ned had brought a large lumpy sack with him in the wheelbarrow and he went to fetch it.
‘What’s in it?’ asked Patsy.
‘You’ll soon see,’ smiled Grandpa Ned as he opened the sack top. Patsy peered inside.
‘They’re old potatoes!’ she cried, disappointed.
‘They’re called seed potatoes,’ explained Grandpa Ned and picked one out of the sack. ‘See how they’re growing shoots already? They’ll give us lots of lovely new potatoes in a few weeks if we look after them properly.’
Together, Patsy and Grandpa Ned planted rows and rows of seed potatoes.
‘There,’ said Grandpa Ned when they had finished. ‘I should say that our allotment is now as good as any one here.’
‘I think it’s better,’ said patsy. ‘Because it’s ours!’
As the weeks went by, Patsy and Grandpa Ned went down to Lincoln Road allotments every night to water the seeds and weed between the little seedlings when they eventually appeared.
Just as the garden centre man had said, the radishes were the first to show and Patsy squealed with delight when she noticed them and ran up the allotment to drag Grandpa Ned down to her patch to show him.
‘Very good!’ he beamed. ‘They will be our first crop!’
Patsy was very pleased and took great care when watering them so as not to disturb the tiny green seedlings.
One by one the rows of seeds started to grow.
The bean seed began to twist themselves up and round the bamboo wigwam and little red flowers appeared.
The tomato plants grew strong and tall and soon had tiny green tomatoes .
The potatoes grew large dark green leaves and when they were big enough and the pale yellow flowers started to show, Grandpa Ned and Patsy heaped banks of soil up against the stems to protect the little potatoes which grew on the roots under the ground.
Summer came and Grandpa Ned worked on the allotment without his shirt. Patsy often wore her swimming costume and wellington boots. It looked a bit funny but she didn’t mind.
Grandma Gladys began to pop down to the allotment to see how things were progressing and was soon having long chats with Mrs Allen.
Grandpa Ned no longer felt stiff and sore every night and his face was becoming tanned and healthy looking. Patsy was as brown as a berry.
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