Grow-your-own mentality has taken root in lockdown

Some of my friends seem to have gone the full Good Life over the last few months, becoming obsessive about the latest homegrown crops in their garden vegetable patches. A combination of having more time at home and the dread of shops running out of basics seems to be behind the grow-yourown resurgence.

Unfortunately I’ve not been able to join in with the wonky carrot experiences, as my notoriously non-green fingers have a tendency to wreak havoc on anything that grows naturally. I have, however, been in charge of monitoring the herbs Mr P planted in pots, as I was determined that even if we weren’t growing our own produce, at least we could add homegrown herbs to flavour the stuff we were cooking. Trouble is, I lost the labels telling us which herbs were which, so apart from those easily identifiable by smell (dill, coriander, basil), there were several that were a complete mystery. We ended up looking at pictures of various herbs on the internet and trying to see if ours looked like them. They didn’t.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at this latest failure. I don’t have great memories from my own family’s self-sufficiency efforts in the ’70s. As we lived in the country, we had room to keep hens. They belonged to my younger sister who tended her six charges with the utmost love and care.

I’ll spare you the details, but all the love in the world was no protection against the fox that got into their run. My poor sister is still traumatised by the experience.

Before the major trauma, we had the minor trauma of the eggs. On being offered a freshly laid organic treat, one of us children would protest “Eurgh, are you joking? I’m not eating that, it’s come out of Ermintrude’s bum. And it’s covered in feathers and gunk”. My mum soon cottoned on and would present omelettes etc, assuring us that the eggs they were made with came from sterile supermarket containers.

What fowl behaviour by ungrateful children. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

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I don’t have great memories from my family’s self-sufficiency efforts in the ’70s