Potatoes, earth’s gold. The thrill of forking the soil, and finding these golden vegetables.
My favourite vegetable. Numerous ways to cook. Salt of the earth. A basic in my book. All shapes, all sizes.
Light up the room with a potato lamp. Or see time passing with a potato clock.
Carl Rogers, the psychologist, spoke of potatoes left in a dark cellar. How they would sprout and grow towards any chink of light. He was comparing how humans continue to grow even in poor conditions.
Hardy potatoes. Give me a potato any day. I’ll survive these dark corona days.
And now whitecurrants. Redcurrants, blackcurrants and whitecurrants. These are see-through, you can see the seed, like a skeleton. The bones. The white bones of a thing. The seed, the essence, all that is needed to become. Plus soil, sun and rain.
What do we need to become? What is a healthy environment for us? What is our soil, sun and rain?
I’m starting a seed library for the allotments. A bank of seeds grown here. If you save your seed and then sow it the next year, it will gradually adapt to the environment. And you can share it with others nearby. And it’s free, free of the capitalist hold on seeds, the start of life. Free like the soil the sun the rain, the air. Guard your seeds with your life.
I recommend a doze to reflect. I was mulling over this Harvest blog, my new bronze trowel, drawing my allotment tools and I began to think of Jim Dine and his drawings and lithographs of tools, Walker Evans and his photographs of tools, Louise Bourgeois and her soft stuffed sculptures.
Years ago I made a papier mache fork, spade and axe, I made stuffed birds. I’d like to make a stuffed hammer.
Berries: gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants ripe for picking. I reap what I have sown. I have cultivated my plot. Metaphors for life.
Produce good to eat, to conserve, to save for winter, less productive times.
There has been a gap in posting. A time to slow down. To think about this blog.
What does it do, produce, make, change, develop, bring to the fore?
Lessons: take time, take your time, slow down, use what you have grown. Drawing slows you down, drawing makes you look. Do more drawing. Keep drawing your tools. The implements that help you cultivate and harvest.
Small brown brush makes me think of small brown bird. How we start to value the small and the brown and the bird. On the allotment there are more birds. I see them more. A wren scuttled under the shed. Collared doves (Where are you?) nick my redcurrants.
Message: See the small things. Enjoy the small things. No need to travel far. Look around. Sit by the love-in-a-mist, watch the bees collect nectar and pollen.
This is a pause in the frenzy of life. A rent in the curtain. Stop and stare. What do you see when you look through?
