Episode #20: Shoddy shed painting

21-22 December - grey, wet and the story of purple paint.

Time was already starting to slip as I wrote this post, so I’m a couple of days later than usual.

First, the winter solstice slipped us past the shortest and darkest days of the year, then the peculiar unanchored days of the winter holiday season kicked in. This last week wasn’t so adrift that folk started asking when Bin Day is, but that’ll be next week for sure. The allotment is quiet, most plots left to the damp and the cold.

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This week’s Plot Shot

Almost everything is a uniform grey right now, and what isn’t grey is brown, mud brown. Colour is rare at this time of year. I could only find one flower in bloom on the plot, a single orange pot marigold, glowing in the gloom.

Marigold Calendula officinalis. Source: Author

Plot work in progress

This week I decided that I needed to address the utter shabbiness and neglect of the shed. I’ve been meaning to re-paint it all year, but there were always too many other sowing, planting and weeding jobs to do over the summer and it kept being pushed down the To Do list. I am a poor shed keeper. Sorry, shed.

Weathered shed. Source: Author

At this point I should explain about the purple paint. Some years ago, when we took the decision to start laying out the plot with raised beds, our attempts were scuppered by the first few wooden edge boards being stolen while we were away for a few weeks. We started again, and decided to paint the wood with as distinctive a colour of wood preservative paint as we could find to act as a deterrent, thinking that if the boards were stolen, we’d at least be able to spot them on another plot on the site and reclaim them. The local DIY chain shed duly obliged, and we found a 5 litre pot of bright purple paint in the end-of-season bargain bin.

Clearly the plum colour was not in fashion that season, and we could see why. It went on bright pinkish-lilac, cartoon My Little Pony plastic purple. It was gaudy and horrible. The purple does darken as the paint dries, and gradually weathers down to a (slightly) more dignified plum tone, but it still stands out.

Paint applied, I rapidly became known as the Purple Shed Lady, and more purple stuff followed (wheelbarrows, buckets, seeds of purple plant varieties). It has become a theme of Plot 101 by accident, but we’ve not had anything stolen since the arrival of the purple paint.

Wet purple paint. Source: Author

With Project Shed Glow-Up now in progress, I’ve got more work to do to stop the wood from rotting any further and keep the shed going for another few years while we focus on getting all the produce beds into better shape. Out of sight of these photos is a stack of unused skirting boards (base boards for any US readers) left over from our kitchen refurbishment. They’ll go on around the bottom, with a skirt of heavy-duty black plastic sheeting behind to keep the damp out. I’ve also got a rotted window frame to replace, which could be more challenging given my low level of woodworking skill and lack of suitable tools. I anticipate some creative bodging to come, but I’m determined not to board up the window and to get it working and openable again. Watch this space.

Harvesting now

Having lost most of what would have been this winter’s brassica crops to the marauding armies of slugs and snails in 2024’s wet spring, our most prolific produce in the depths of December is the chard.¹

This chard ‘Candy Striped’ isn’t as tall as the more common “Rainbow’ or the white-stemmed ‘Fordhook Giant’, but is worth every bit of space in the beds for the vibrant pink and orange stems. I’d grow these in a flower border, they are so lovely.

Sweet peas, Lathyrus odoratus. Source: Author

Also growing well are the sweet pea seedlings in the greenhouse, although they are being jostled by teenager broad beans eager to be planted out. These won’t add to the produce tally,² but are such a stalwart on allotments, they more than earn their space.

Making and eating

Before the run into the Christmas break, when our making and eating tends to dominate the days and all the kitchen surfaces are full of fruit and veg to be prepped, we decided to inventory the house collection of cookbooks. Heaving them all out of the cupboards took up a whole morning. You can see why.

I’m a firm believer that there is no such thing as ‘too many cookbooks’, in fact, no such thing as too many books of any kind. (After all, my husband, Clive, applies the same logic to guitars, and they take up far more space than cookbooks or sweet peas.) There are simply too many great recipes, flavours and ingedients to limit the choice, and even our annual advent calendar style addition of four new books leaves some great ones behind each year.

This was a thorough reshuffle, the first for about five years. The piles are either geographical (European, Middle East, Mediterranean, South Asia, East Asia…) or by topic/mehod (baking, preserving, barbecuing…), but it is never a perfect system. There was a lot of passing books between piles, browsing then putting them back again. Lots of ideas for next year’s making.

E17 Local Hero

My local heroes this week are the Turkish guys who run the corner shop. Unlike the rest of us, they clearly have a grip on which day of the week it is and never seem to close. They are currently putting on a great festive vegetable display. Check out these great green and red chillis.

Community of Practice

Being the holiday season, almost all the allotment gang are away, and those who aren’t away for the season are laid up with a roulette of bad colds, flu, Covid, norovirus, or any combination of the four. The community is down and absent, and I’m the only fool here.

Plot 101 at its winter worst. Things can only get better.

Weekly Fox News

This week, there are more foxes on site than plot holders. They come out when there’s a delivery of food, but otherwise keep to themselves. Even foxes know when the weather is too damp and cold to be out.

Big Ted, checking the menu. Source: Colin Bowen.

Until next week, if time still has any meaning by then.

Ang

1. Chard another 300g of organic chard, currently £2.50 per 200g for Natoora rainbow at Ocado, total £3.75.

2. Total this week, £3.75, making total to date since Episode #5, £204.09. Sixteen weeks’ produce tally, based on current supermarket or local farmers’ market prices.