Weeding is tough so better get Eric, 91, to dig in

TIME to get down and dirty again, on the ground that never forgives.

Seven weeks is a long time to leave an allotment to wild Mother Nature. She takes such shocking advantage of your absence.

I’m not supposed to do gardening yet after the big heart op, but if I leave it any longer the weeds will be bigger than the potato plants sprouting high after summer rain. Shallow-rooted groundsel and similar are easily unearthed, but my plot is plagued with purple-leafed weeds with deep tap roots.

They have to be forked out, and that involves risky moves for the old body. Like getting down on haunches to pull them out, and getting back up again. Hmmm. As for the three-foot-high thistles, forget it.

They need a man with a spade, and neighbour Eric obliges.

It’s embarrassing when a man of 91 has to do the donkey work for you, but fortunately I have forgotten how to blush so the shame swiftly fades.

That’s the thing about allotmenteering. As I have noticed before, there is a camaraderie, a mutual help system, that kicks in when you’re in trouble like mine.

Mark, the former teacher with the next plot, has been watering my tomato plants for weeks while I was housebound. They’re doing fine. But so they should. His fingers are greener than mine.

Not only do his raspberry canes yield delicious fruit, his wife Sue coaxes lovely blackcurrant jam from the bush I haven’t the patience to harvest.

Horticultural therapy should be on the NHS for post-cardiac patients. The fresh air, especially first thing in the morning, is a tonic worth a bubble pack of pills. Just don’t overdo it, oldilocks.