Had our first casualty of the allotment today. It was caused by a major ruckus between Daughters 1 & 2 and nearly resulted in them becoming casualties themselves!

Started outside the house. We were heading down the plot to plant out the dwarf beans which we have been nurturing for weeks. Have to say, we didn’t have as much success with the dwarf beans as I would have liked. For some reason our success rate with them was particularly low. Granny says she thinks it have been too cold when we potted them, will have to remember this for next year. Anyway, this is why I might have had a slight overreaction to the massacre of dwarf beans which was about to occur. We were only planting a very dwarf selection of dwarf beans to start off with, so to lose a few before we even reached the road was rather a blow.

To try and put a positive spin on things (this was after all supposed to be a ‘positive, family ‘bonding with nature’ type venture’) I would like to think the episode occurred due to the extremely helpful personalities which both girls possess. They both wanted to carry the same pots of beans.

I’m sure you can imagine what happened next, but as the event is still rather raw with me, I feel the need to rant a little and let you all know exactly how it happened.

On one side of the bucket was the eldest daughter, who claimed she was holding it first. On the other side of the container was the feisty middle daughter, who, on noticing she was carrying slightly less plants than her sister, decided she wanted to swap and wasn’t prepared to negotiate on her demands.

Hence much pulling, pushing, screaming, shouting and dancing around on the front drive. Just to add, at this point I am trying to wrestle the baby allotmenteer in to the pushchair, who didn’t want to go in, whilst referee the show down which is occurring in full view of every passing car and our neighbour and her friends which are out on their front drive, trying to pretend the rather raised volume level isn’t affecting their conversation at all.

I am already feeling a little frazzled, when, like a scene out of a cartoon, I see the daughter 2 trip on stone, release the bucket, which then theatrically flies into the air, does some sort of stunt flip and thunders to the floor, bean side down, showering everyone with compost. Then follows an uncomfortable silence where the baby, the neighbours and the allotmenteers wait to see what is going to happen next.

I run over, not to rescue daughter 2 who is down on the floor, legs half in the air and has compost in her hair, but to my darling bean plants which have just suffered terminal damage.

I would like to say that we calmly regrouped, checked daughter 2 for any injuries, rescued the plants and headed on our way. Afraid that didn’t happen. No, I stropily picked up the plants and started off on a rant, which would have been worthy of some sort of an award and lasted the entire way to the plot.

We did all apologise and make friends in the end (took me a while I find my forgiving side I have to say). The girls are now very well versed on how plants are ‘very delicate’ and we must exercise extreme care when handling them, and I think we have the smallest collection of dwarf beans on the whole allotment. Let’s hope the slugs don’t take more!