Digging for Victory

There has been something of a wartime feel around us in recent days. With some food items not being readily available as before, there seems to have been a natural desire to grow your own. The latest shortage is amazingly SEEDS!

Down at Lock15, the ADAPT LOCK15 Gardeners have literally "made hay while the sun shines". A combination of fine Spring weather and suddenly more time on our hands has meant that the Lock Gardens have had more attention than usual. Gardening is recognised as a good form of exercise and the gardeners have taken the opportunity to work hard on their garden plots while keeping a social distance of a canal's width between them and anyone else.

Already potatoes, broad beans, peas, onions can be seen mingling with the colourful Spring flowers of forget-me-nots, red campions, wood avens, cowslips. Runner beans are beginning to wind their way up their poles and strings and carrots and parsnips still teasing us about whether they will germinate or not. There is always an endless fascination – yes, sometimes frustration – working with the natural world. It is always so beyond our control. Yet when we share in nature's bounty there is such a sense of satisfaction and joy. A true feeling that this is where we as human beings belong rather than in the artificial plastic world we inhabit. I have the feeling that many others have rediscovered their "home" with the world around them during this time and the reality that we are of the earth.

Still enough of philosophising, time to get my hands dirty again, even if those wartime longings of "this green and pleasant land" swim around my mind.

If you are taking a walk down the canal and one of us is working on our garden plot, stop and have a word across the canal.

When days are dark and hope is gone,
"Keep Calm and Carry On".
When shops are bare with no food to see,
"Do your bit" "Dig for Victory".
When you're at a loss of what to eat,
"I make a good soup says Potato Pete".
When your kids leave you at wit's end,
"Doctor Carrot is the children's friend".
So here's the clue, of what to do in lock-down days,
"Plant a Victory Garden" and cheers you'll raise.