Overwhelm, Weeders and Greener Fingers

9.30 am...... My husband and I stand in the long wet grass at the allotment. I survey each weed-choked raised bed, each rotten wood panel, every collapsed fruit cage, every giant dock weed and slugged cabbage stalk, and I feel utterly overwhelmed and hopeless. We are expecting a new gardener this afternoon to come and help but I don't know where to start, what to ask him to do.

 In the green-house we pick snails off the glass panes and discover all the beans and peas my husband planted last week have been chewed up, spat out and are sitting in slime trails on the surface of the seed compost. I say throw them away and start again. He says they'll be alright. I feel his allotment love is being uprooted, flung on the compost heap along with his knowledge, his memory, his stamina, his zest for growing things....

I take sister advice and decide to concentrate on the weeding.

1.30pm...... We are three very different weeders. My husband lies alongside the vegetable bed, propped up on elbow, pulls at the weeds and over-arms them into the wheelbarrow. I'm more of an African squatter  weeder - digging down with my copper trowel, shaking soil off roots  and stuffing the weeds into an old plastic compost bag by my side. Our new gardener is more of a kneeler and reacher hoiking out his weeds strangling the strawberry plants, the asparagus crowns, and collecting them in a spread out tarpaulin square. His beds are by far the best when he's finished -  raked  smooth and not a tell tale upside down speck of green anywhere. I love him already.

5.30 pm..........My husband sleeps. I sit at the table in the kitchen with a cup of tea, my feet on a chair and the sun hot on my back through the glass. My fingers are sore and brown stained in the cracks round my nails - they look like gardener's hands.  I don't feel so daunted now - even though I know they'll come back, the weeds.

What I'd really like is for Monty Don to come and live on our allotment and tell me what to do - how far apart should you plant beans anyway?  But in his absence and in the absence of my husband's energy and memory I've decided our new gardener is the next best thing.

   Up till now I've missed out on the growing-veggies-gene rooted in my family - preferring to cook them. And up till now I've relied on my husband to bring home the leeks. Today I discovered that  I  may need to develop greener vegetable fingers sooner than I thought - or wanted.