(an allotment is an area of land sufficient to feed a family of four, which was offered for a nominal rent to people at the end of World War I).

This morning we went to our allotment for the last time.  We dug up a few small leeks, cut the sweet peas and the two remaining roses.  Then we carried to the car the box in which we locked our tools, we offered our wheelbarrow to the general gathering.  Someone gave us their surplus runner beans and a beetroot. 

Then we left. 

When Oscar and I first got together, ten years ago, and found our house, I complained that the garden wasn’t big enough.  He suggested we get an allotment, which we did, and for years planted roses, raspberries and various vegetables there, very successfully.  We mainly used it as a ‘cutting garden’ however; the great houses used often to have a cutting garden where they grew rows of roses and dahlias, and sweet peas and daffodils and irises or whatever, just to cut to decorate the house.  I loved my roses; I had 22 of them on the allotment, and cut them when they were in bud to bring into the house.  We have a long kitchen table and we three sit at one end.  The other end, from June to October, was filled with roses, their scent delighting us.  I saved the petals to give to friends who made tea and lotions with them.  I gave bunches of roses to friends.  It was lovely, having these exquisitely beautiful, heavenly scented flowers to share.   

This last year, however, it hasn’t been easy to keep on top of the weeds, for a variety of reasons.  Oscar rather lost interest in it, and Jemima, our elderly retriever needed a lot of looking after and when her back legs failed, we had to haul her round in a harness.  But she would try to run, would weave around and hurtle herself downstairs and it wasn’t surprising that we found ourselves wrenching our backs or shoulders, and pulling  a muscle here and there and generally not doing well physically.  We went to the allotment less often.  The weeds proliferated.  And we were asked to leave.  It was the weeds, they explained, and the number of roses.  Allotments were for fruit and vegetables.  The odd rose was alright, but not 22! 

So, after ten years of 22 roses being all right, we left. 

The walk from the car park to the allotment was one of my happiest.  The quietness of it, the calm. The wide open sky, the sound of the birds, being out on the edge of the village there was only a couple of houses in sight.   Being there, weeding, planting, cutting, chatting to anyone else there, was lovely.  Filling my trug with roses was lovely.  Growing things, spreading manure, fertilising, finding a toad scampering away as I dug the soil to plant a courgette…. it felt good. 

I know I’ll miss it.  But there was also a feeling of guilt that accompanied many days, that I should have been up there, doing the weeding, feeding the roses, pruning them, watching for blackspot and greenfly and rust. 

We’re older.  Really that’s the issue.  We could no longer be bothered with it.  And although I loved it, it fits into the love and loss dynamic that I begin to perceive everywhere, in everything and everyone.  What do we love that endures?  When we die, we will have to leave it all behind.  The allotment is one less complication, one less pleasure/responsibility to keep us attached to this world.  It had a place in our lives together, a place that is no longer required.  Some sadness, and some relief.  Tempus sure is fugiting, as my irreverent father used to say.

The picture is of the two last roses I cut.