Part 1: March - June 2020

Made together from the beginning of lockdown, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’!

Dad has always grown vegetables, and some fruit. When we were little we lived in a big old house with a huge 60 yard long garden, as dad says - I have no idea what that means, but it was a massive garden. We had our own personal allotment at the bottom. Dad had tomatoes, beans, onions, gooseberries, raspberries, cooking apples, potatoes and other food growing. I have fond memories of mum asking us to go down the garden to get beans for dinner, or into the greenhouse to pick tomatoes. At one point we had chickens, a goat and 2 ducks which didn’t lay (because when dad returned them to the farm, they were both male). We had old bathtubs from dad’s work (he was a plumber) down there too as water butts, and sometimes we had little stickle back fish in them which we’d netted out the pond at the back of an old mill along the road.

When my parents moved to downsize, they bought a bungalow with a small garden. But they are both amazing gardeners, and have created a beautiful space, with lots of different niches to fulfil their needs. Mum has a shed/art studio, there’s a large shed (which I daren’t show you the insides of because it is crammed with things dad has kept ‘just in case’ - but remarkably, quite often things do come in handy -he’s a fixer, a repairer, and builds all sorts of things from bits and bobs and scraps. I’ll maybe do a post about it one day.) And then there’s the mini allotment.

Dad’s mini allotment manages to provide some of their vegetables such as runner beans, onions (which we finished off a couple of months ago from last August) tomatoes (which also seem to feed family and friends too as they are never ending) and beetroot, which sadly didn’t come to anything this year. Whatever he feels like planting. Sometimes in Summer they come down to visit us and mum’s sister and another friend very kindly water the tomatoes. Dad complained that they seem to come to see me when the tomatoes are at their best every year but I know my parents are both glad that others benefit from gathering them. It’s good to share food!

The video log is 30 mins, I’ll make a shorter version, I need to improve my video editing skills and there will be a part 2. This time I added music, which was kindly provided by a friend and some cute little animations! I hope you enjoy it, dad makes everything look simple and has been commended for his patience.