Culture Vulture – How does your garden grow?

I’m officially a British citizen now!

That’s not true. I already was. However, in my experience, one requires certain elements in one’s life to truly be a British citizen. Some of these include:

• A love of tea – which I do not have. Give me coffee or give me death, but save your scalding hot sock water for some other sucker. 
• An affinity for cutesy words. For such a serious culture, you love your cute-isms. Crimbo, cuppa, preggers, and a litany of words ending with the “ie” sound; brekkie, baccy, brolly, telly, wellies, Maccie’s, trackies, leccy, lurgy, and Uni, to name a few.
• While we’re on the topic of language… another reason I haven’t qualified as truly British is my clearly logical and superior use of the letter R. When a word ends with an R, you need to say the R (water vs “wotah”, butter vs “buttah”). The technical explanation is that the British accent is non-rhotic, which means you drop unstressed Rs in words. Then why not drop the letter from the spelling, I ask you? My poor kid is having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to spell in general, as English is an illogical, exception-based language. Add to that the need to figure out when her British teachers are skipping over the Rs in words, and she’s just doomed.
• The confusing Rs don’t end there either. You lot tend to add Rs where they don’t exist! When a word ends in a vowel, and is followed by a word that begins with another vowel, it should not have a random R thrown in. (“I just sawr a purple cat! The very idear of it!” “She’s from Canad-er or Americ-er, I think.”) 
• A love of weird foods, like marmite (but is it even a food?), mushy peas (why would anyone that isn’t under one or over 90 choose to eat something mushy?), black pudding (I don’t even need to justify this as weird, you know it is), salad (a few dry leaves of lettuce is not a salad, it’s lettuce), and brown sauce (need I direct back to my previous rant?) among others.
• A firm stance on which comes first on the scone; jam or cream. It’s obviously cream (so I’ve scored points for at least that one).

I would fail to meet the official Home Office standards of citizenry in many ways. But I’ve just secured my future in this country. I’ve got an allotment! That means from now on my Instagram posts will be accompanied by annoying hashtags like #allotmenting and #allotmentlife and maybe even the dreaded #blessed. But moreover, it means I will be accepted as one of you! I finally have my own little plot of land that I can make into a haven of vegetables and blossoms. Once I manage to literally dig my way through the weeds, I can plant strange English delights like tomahtoes, strawbries, bluebries, coriander (cilantro), courgettes (zucchini) and aubergines (eggplant). I can trade excess veg with allotment neighbours, and find community among like-minded people.

That can be a challenge sometimes, as a new-comer. When we moved here, I had a convenient ice-breaker accessory in the form of an 18-month old child, which meant I made friends quickly. However, moving beyond the Mummy-world proved more difficult. Finding a common ground, literally, is an excellent way to meet new people.

We used to have war gardens in Canada, but the idea of community plots is a fairly new one. They tend to be small and oft-robbed, as the tradition and etiquette is not well understood. They’re also few and far between, and are usually run by community groups, so there’s no central way to sign up.

However, I grew up gardening with my mom (that’s mum to you) in a fairly big yard. The feeling of digging into warm, damp soil is almost nourishing for me – it stirs up memories of hot summer afternoons with iced tea breaks in the shade of an oak tree. These kinds of memories were not ones I could make for my own daughter in our narrow, terraced yard, as hard as I’ve tried. In fact, she’s rather annoyed that the copious plant pots take up any play space.

Now we’ve got a space where she can run, follow her imagination up tree trunks and into fairy circles, and learn how to plant and harvest food – a skill she will certainly need with the coming apocalypse of climate change and closed European borders.

Interested in signing up for your own allotment? Add your name to the York Council’s waiting list.