Thursday 3 July 2008

Princess Push-off

Everyone has their favourite time on the allotment: Michael, for instance, likes to go in the morning, while Lucy appears in the evening after work. I go whenever I can fit it in, but my favourite time of all is at dawn in midsummer, long before anyone else has got up. The pre-breakfast allotment visit is an annual ritual, when Mrs Low and I drag ourselves out of bed unfeasibly early in order to harvest vegetables for the school summer fair.
It started a few years ago, when we had a salad surplus and I thought it would be a good idea to flog what we didn't need at the fair. Since then we have felt unable to give it up, and so one morning a year find ourselves grubbing about trying to work out how much chard we can spare (lots - it always grows back) and whether it was a sacrifice too far to sell our new potatoes (too damn right: let them grow their own spuds).
An hour or so later, and we had a pretty good haul, including beetroot, chard, spinach, peas, salad, spring onions, rhubarb, sweet peas, roses, poppies and carnations. We also liberated some perfect little courgettes - complete with flowers - from our neighbour's plot because we knew they were going spare, although we did check first; I am sure she didn't mind the 7.30am phone call from us asking "Can we have your courgettes, please?" It is for charity, after all.
These things don't sell themselves, however, and it is the little marketing touches that make the difference: the hand-drawn labels by my daughter Kitty on the pots of chilli seedlings, for instance, and the edible flowers - nasturtiums and heartsease - in the bagged salad which meant we could charge an extortionate £2 a pop and still keep a straight face. Then there is the question of to clean or not to clean: we wash the spring onions, because they look good when they are pristine white, but not the beetroot because a bit of earth on the root gives it an authentic touch. It must work, because the entire beetroot stock went in about half an hour.
What made me feel really proud, however, is the fact that the small posies of flowers we were selling included an attractive purple thistle-like flower which grows self-seeded on the edge of our plot; we really should have got rid of it ages ago, but it is so pretty we haven't the heart. Essentially we were making money for the school fair by selling our weeds. (My gardener friend tells me it is one of the Centaurea family, but I have no idea which one).
The only hiccup came when the dad who was giving kids rides on the back of his motorcycle for £1 a go was told by the police to stop: the fair is held in a paddock next to Kensington Palace, and apparently Princess Michael of Kent didn't like the noise. I expect she is feeling a bit bad about that now, because she probably didn't realise it was for charity. Perhaps she would like to come over and have a look for herself next year; if she gets her people to talk to my people, I could even put aside a bag of beetroot for her.

4 comments:

The Garden Monkey said...

Who cares how she feels - string her up.

Cromwell Monkey

Valentine Low said...

That is basically what I saying. I just put it differently.
PS Thanks for the kind words (from you and your guest reviewer) about my book.

The Garden Monkey said...

Not at all - I enjoyed it.

Say hi, next time you drop by my blog, or mt garden book blog.

GM

Unknown said...

Hi Valentine, I just had to stop by and say "fantastic book" even though I haven't finished reading it yet. My Mother in Law bought it for my birthday last week, and at every spare moment I am reading it. Your experiences are very similar to some of mine and when you made a reference to Asterix's magic potion quite early on in the book, I knew it would be a big hit with me. It is a shame you don't like beetroot though!! ha ha.
Anyway keep up the good work & hope you have time to look at my blog one day. I will add your blog to my blog roll if that's ok.
Ali