188. The Home Allotment

When I first started visiting this house, before I was asked to occupy, Herself mainly used the little back yard as a sun trap - turning her skin up to the sun and waiting happily for a sizzle. That was before the days of the Kentish escape, when we spent all our time in London.

These days, that same back yard is transformed into an urban oasis. It's green and verdant. Her Vitus Cognitiae is the envy of all who witness it in full bloom, as it is both beautifully vigorous and architecturally elegant. She has a bad habit of moving plants around and killing them, but the real discovery has been her talent for vegetables.

Herself is not a woman to muck about growing flowers. She only quite likes being given a bunch of flowers, and if in one of my more Fotherington-Thomas moments I encourage her to come and smell a wondrous rose she looks at me witheringly and says 'hm' without moving.

But get her on to tomatoes, or, this summer, cucumbers, and her face lights up. She has the new convert's zeal and woe betide me if I forget to water the veggies if she's away. I wouldn't dare forget.

This is the second year of gluttish tomato crops. I help the process by lugging huge bags of compost from the garden centre to the car, and from the car to the garden. Then I am allowed to do any other back-breaking preparatory work. After that, I have no further purpose other than seconded waterer and, later, suitably awe-struck eater. Fine by me. I know my place.

In between times, a little bit of magic goes on. She tends to things in little pots in the window sills. Then she plants out and encourages and waters and feeds. Then, before you can think, the tomato plants are three feet tall and already growing tiny green fruit. She frets until they are visibly tall and thrusting, then assumes the smug humility of the mother of giant boys and pretty girls.

This year, she has added cucumbers to her conquests. The sight of a plant no more than four feet high, hanging low with the sheer weight of its fruit is new to me. The cucumbers Herself has grown are as long, as green and significantly more delicious than anything the supermarkets can provide. We have had at least 16 already and the plants show no sign of slowing down. It's amazing.

We also have abundant herbs, lettuces and even chillis. The beans were delicious, but they have been dismissed for not living up to Herself's now incredibly high productivity standards. I fear that one year some evil bug will take up residence and shatter her confidence but until then nothing is more fun or more satisfying than her home allotment, and she deserves all the plaudits she receives. Now. Anybody know any recipes for cucumbers...?

*with apologies for the rather...um... phallic photo.