Tanya from Allotments 4 you passed on a challenge to choose the eighth photo from my eighth photo folder and post it along with the story behind it.
Being me I only had three photos in my eighth folder so Tanya adapted the criteria to be the third photo in the fifth folder. So here it is:
The photo isn't brilliant as it was taken pre digital and scanned a few years ago when I wanted some photos for our website. It was taken some time in the late 1980s when we took on our second allotment plot.
We initially took an allotment when we decided we didn't have enough space in our garden to grow everything we wanted to and vegetables too. About a third of our garden was vegetables at that time. We considered moving to somewhere with a larger garden but couldn't find anywhere we wanted to move to so Martyn came up with the idea of an allotment. His dad had gardened a plot when Martyn was younger and his grandad before that.
This was well before allotments became 'trendy' and I wasn't really keen. I pictured us being surrounded by old men growing leeks and to some extent this was how it was. I was one of only two women - the other being retired and site secretary. We were a lot younger than most other plotters and a bit of a novelty. We grew strange things called herbs and didn't necessarily grow everything in straight lines from east to west.
We rarely volunteered the information that we had an allotment as we would have been considered to be a bit weird. When we did mention it we were greeted with strange looks. How things have changed! Not just in attitudes but the view has changed too.
The following photo was taken from a similar viewpoint this month.
Hope that is OK Tanya! I'm just glad that it didn't end up being a photo of me!
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Well I think a photo of you would have been grweat...but the one you had along with the story was good too!!
ReplyDeleteI still get the weird looks when I say i have an allotment...i think maybe because it is solely mine and not mine and the hubbys...pepole are always surprised. This last year we have had some younger people signing up for plots but until that point Kate and I were the youngest and the only females who went down to purely work and not potter behind the Hubby...lol
We have lots of young people on our site now see the photos here
ReplyDeletehttp://glallotments.co.uk/PlottersMeettheplotters.aspx
There's even a photo of me amongst them
How times have changed. You're considered trendy nowadays if you've got an allotment.
ReplyDeleteHi Jo - It was strange to suddenly become trendy!
ReplyDelete