Age of Aquarius

I was in my early twenties when I heard that song, “Age of Aquarius”. Back then it sounded cheerful and optimistic, a group of people in tune with the needs of the Earth telling the rest of us how a great age of peace was on its way.

I’m all for getting in tune with the earth. The veg plot is full at the moment; the peas are doing okay and the runner beans are making up for the reluctance of the peas. The onions suffered in the first heatwave and ten of them bolted – by the time the second heatwave came around, we’d got wise and hosed them down once a day to keep them cooler. The potatoes are doing nicely, the carrots and parsnips have taken, there’s black kale and leeks waiting their turn for a space in the beds, trombocini and squashes curling up the canes. Not giant squash. I learned my lesson from the twenty kilo monster squash that took over an entire bed a few years ago. Though I might give away packs of its seeds at seed swaps. There’s always some fool somewhere willing to join the Biggest Squash in the World race.

In the middle of all this green loveliness, our water authority announced a hosepipe ban. I can’t complain, much; we’ve had very little rain since March and the temperature hits thirty degrees and more too often. I am considering driving down the burst watermain that’s making a stream out of one of the streets in our village and collecting some free litres. It was reported five days before the ban took hold and again at least once days later (only to find that there was no record of the first report). The repair was set to begin yesterday, only to be cancelled and re-scheduled for July 31st. In the meantime, the residents of the street are told that their water company ‘loves every drop’.

We have a new routine. If we wake up early, we get out into the garden for a couple of hours of weeding or watering before the sun comes up. Then we have breakfast outside in the shade, feeling the air heating up and the breeze slackening to nothing. If we miss that early morning slot, we spent thirty or forty minutes in the evening watering before settling outside with a beer or wine to enjoy the cool. My garden slopes uphill from the tap, unfortunately, so we’re slogging up with full watering cans. A lot of full watering cans.

It’s been great, and we’re thinking of keeping the system after the ban is lifted. It’s great exercise and (like walking a dog) it’s exercise you can’t miss without feeling guilty. Plants can’t howl like a dog, but we’ve raised most of these from seed and the sight of them drooping would be offensive. Plus, having switched off the sprinkler a fortnight before the ban, we’re seeing the difference in how the plants react to individual doses.

The squashes and cucumbers get feed in their water every three days. The peas and beans get floods of water and will do until they stop flowering (a week or two for the peas). Potatoes get a little every day. The carrots and parsnips get just enough to keep them going, but they’re drought tolerant; the onions are almost all matured, harvested and tied up in bunches in the shade. I remember going outside this March to clip the last few of last year’s onions from their bunches, fleece on and getting soaked by the rain. I was grumbling that I needed the rain to bloody stop for a few days and look how that turned out.

The plants are thriving. They seem to be growing a little each day, and we’re looking after them better than when we left the sprinkler to keep them going. We’re seeing where the weeds are growing, and making sure they get taken out. We’ve formed shallow pits around each plant to keep the water near the roots and stop it from dribbling away onto the path. Slugs and snails will be getting a swift eviction as soon as they appear.

Sitting outside with a beer has disadvantages too. It meant we spotted what we thought was a small muntjac enjoying the straw off our lawn. By all means give me the sermon about loving nature – when they start a belching contest yards from our open bedroom window I shoo them off. Still not prepared for Tuesday’s invaders… one goat and one sheep, taking a holiday from the people who will feast on them this autumn, ambling around our freshly watered veg plot and taking great rips out of the plants.

I don’t want to hear about ‘harmony and understanding’. We’ve worked harder than ever this year to keep those plants producing food for us, and there’s a quarter-mile of varied hedge for them to sample. It was a ‘Shoo!’ and a trek up the garden to mend the fence they broke through to get here (and since then, regular patrols back to re-mend the fence they’re stubbornly trying to re-bust).

If it doesn’t rain soon, we may be asked to scale back even watering cans on food plants. Until then, I’m spending my evenings watering the polytunnel and the veg plot with cans full of cold water and returning to write a novel set in a world where water is rationed all year. I’m wondering whether that will happen in my own lifetime. Given how this year has gone so far – it’s entirely possible.