The brassicas have a home in waiting

I went down to the plot on Thursday night to see if there were any more courgettes to collect (there weren't). On my way back up to the main gate our Allotment uber Gaffer flagged me down, waving his arms proudly.
"Ahhh, just the man! You'll see that a young couple have taken over the bottom half of that plot next but one to yours. You can have the top half."

I did the maths in my head quite quickly. The site on offer is a field of dense couch grass, and that's what I wanted the least. Milk thistles, sow thistles, even isolated and controlled knotweed are just fine, but digging out a mat of couch grass rhizomes for ever more is certainly not my idea of fun. On the other hand, it is next but one to my current plot, and it is next to one of the all-too-sparse water butts. There's also a thing about gift horses and mouths and the inverse relationship between begging and choosing to consider.
"Ahh, thank you Allotment uber Gaffer, I'll take it."

I went down there early this morning to survey the scene in a bit more detail.

Yes, it does look like a fairly dense field of grass, and one that's set seed too. In the middle of everything there's a bed of broad beans that are chocolate brown and well past their best.

As Roots Manuva says, "chin high, puff chest and get right to it". So, I've spent the rest of the morning with my sickle (it's surprising how many glances a six foot four man with a shaved head gets when walking through the centre of Bristol with a sickle) and fork trying to bestow some sort of order. Despite the fairly promising looking patch at the bottom of the area (foreground) I decided to start at the top, where the grass was at its worst; something to do with woolly thinking about saving the best 'til last.

I'm really glad I started at the top.

First of all, it hasn't been grassy for that long, which means that the grass is easier to get out than I'd anticipated.

Secondly, the last incumbent clearly put a lot of effort into caring for the soil up there. As I wrote above, it's only two plots along from mine but the soil is much darker, more crumbly and obviously in better heart. I'd say lots of good stuff has been added to it over previous years.

Thirdly, and most importantly of all, as I was tidying up to go home the couple who have taken the lower half of the plot turned up. After exchanging pleasantries we talked boudaries, and it appears the Allotment uber Gaffer has promised them the bottom half to include that clear looking bit I thought we were inheriting. I'll need to catch up with the AuG on this - he's never that decisive with his adminstrative bureaucracy. (Indeed, I'm not even clear whether we've been given this extra patch only to solve an immediate brassica crisis, or whether we can have it in perpetuity.)

However, as things stand I leave with the sense of having avoided needlessly doing someone else's work for them, coupled with a slight sense of guilt that I'd spent the entire morning offloading our weed roots and other rubbish onto what turned out to be their allotment... doo de doo de doo...