To be honest, I felt it was a bit far into September to call this entry anything to do with gardening diary August. No it's mid September and autumn is knocking on the fence, and caused one piece of it to finally succumb to the way all things eventually go.

I had an interesting comment on an earlier entry, someone who also missed my writing, so here you go with a bit more on my favourite relaxation exercise. I missed the open day of Sir John Stirling Maxwell Gardens, for a good reason (although some sarcastic tongues may say that I would have done anything to avoid a renewed rope-in for an afternoon's worth of incessant dish washing, which was my luck last year, and still I got almost evicted) but I couldn't fail to notice the big sign at the plot closest to the entrance: "Not to be judged only by God" which was hilarious and sombre as well. It was actually a bit hard to make sense of because the line breaks made it read like God herself had written those lines.

Open day, you see, is also judgement day. I'm sure I had the biggest marrows of the year, but I'm not interested in competition of any kind when it comes to gardening, and I know darn well that I would never qualify for the best newcomer or anything to do with "best" for that matter. I do enjoy the jumble sale, homemade baking and jams and pickles, as well as the company of the special breed that plotholders are.

In particular, the gardener with the defiant sign is someone I really enjoy a wee chat with. He's a lovely guy, sociable, liked across the plots, and he has the most stunningly beautiful garden. Yet he is at odds with the committee. Now, I've never attended an AGM because I'm not in for the petty politics of alotments, I just want to spend my precious time digging. Still, it does strike me as odd that a gardener by heart the likes of him publicly denounces the committee, that I even get a rare comment on my blog from a fellow gardener on the eviction list.

Something is wrong here. I have every sympathy for efforts to keep the plots well maintained, and I also accept that I don't spend as much time in the garden as I would like to. In an ideal world. However, a) if there's a reason for a temporary lack of effort b) if the plot is actually planted and the weeds are only putting up an effort to get the upper hand but don't, and c) if the plots just very closely around me are actually worse ...
I must come to believe that it's personal.

I have no insight whatsoever what the problem is. This year, my plot was planted and mostly weed free, I sent a letter in advance to advise of an absence, and have by now remedied the ensuing weeds. Still, I'm worried that this isn't good enough, just as the afternoon spent stupidly washing dishes to get brownie points (time that I could have spent weeding) had no effect whatsoever.

I invite fellow Pollok Park gardeners to enlighten me about the hidden agenda of the committee and to conjointly express our concerns. At the end of the day, all I want to do is enjoy gardening. As a flat dweller, this is the only option I have to do that. I don't want to be harrassed though, not see it as a chore, but enjoy every minute of it. What's wrong with that?