I remember the breeze on my knees
when I was in short trousers,
walking with mother to her first allotment
when she was pleased to have a property
of her own-she had found the only loophole
she could find that made married women
less than the absolute property of their husbands,
besides family allowance for two children,
but not for one child, being paid to the mother,
which gave married women money in their own right.
Family Allowance cut the father control of the money
that paid for the clothing that his children wore,
but even that was done more for the sake
of the school uniforms the money would buy
than for the children, or for the sake of the mothers
who still had few rights, in their own right.
Women could rent Allotments, not that many did
because it seemed to be a rather primitive feminism,
perhaps as comparable with the primitive Methodism
of historical memory, incorporated into The Methodist Union:
A married woman having an allotment was a feminist
form of non-conformism against married mores
that was going to be unfashionable with many women
who had more materialist aspirations within marriage.
One her early plans for the allotment that marked it out
as compared with male allotment holders was to plant flowers
near the path that was the route to all the allotment either side.
I was greatly taken by the colours of the flowers. If I'd had
a painting set and paper I'd have amused myself making daubs
of what I saw, but getting the colours right. How wrong or right
was Mother in childminding me whilst gardening? Minding one child
she could complete the tasks the garden demanded for growing food alright.
One child and one garden was fine for using up her time, multitasking.
But often I was bored and alone, she said that the flower garden
'Was for me', or that it 'was mine'. If I had been allowed to read
whilst being minded I could have paraphrased Virginia Woolf
to Mother. 'An Allotment Of One's Own' and I would have felt
I had a share in it. But with the work she did there was no time
to listen. Or explain that for the flower patch to be properly mine
she would have to teach me, the way her father had taught her
in the garden space that he rented, that was behind
the village Primitive Methodist Chapel/School she attended.
Alas there were no lessons, primitive or other, Mother taught me,
as to how to garden. What Mother meant when she said the flowers
'were mine' was that the rest of the garden was hers alone to keep me
from not looking where I trod and stepping on what she had planted.
The tasks the allotment required were hers to do alone, as she enjoyed,
or direct me in. My grandad, her father, was a good gardener.
He kept a neat suburban style front garden, grew his veg and salads
in the garden next to the Methodist Church, and was paid
to keep the planted borders around the nearby factory clean.
I keep a cheerfully untidy garden in which the insects
are the top of the hierarchy, they will be around long after
my very limited gardening skills have withered, like the rest of me.
But with my mother aged ninety
and her still keeping an allotment
that may be some time away yet.
