To tell my plot neighbour I know her secret

[Oysterbabe]

(Lighthearted)
I have an allotment. It is poorly maintained but I do my best. I have a job, a 2 and 4 year old and I don't keep on top of it as much as I should. It gives me a lot of pleasure when I do get a good session down there though so I persevere. I have a monster pumpkin growing right now that I'm very proud of.

My plot neighbour has a beautiful, pristine plot that produces an endless stream of perfect fruit and vegetables. When I see her down there she's relaxing on her bench or gently pruning something. I often compliment her plot and express how envious I am. She'll usually give me a benevolent smile and say something about it's hard work but worth the effort.

Last night I popped down pretty late, just before dark, to stash some things I'd bought in the shed. There was a man there strimming her plot. I asked if he was a relative of plot neighbour and he wasn't. He is her gardener. He goes there once a week to do the weeding, keep everything tidy and prepare beds for planting.

WIBU to drop him into conversation next time she's watching me waist deep in bindweed?

I run the local allotments and I don’t understand all the horror. A lady having a gardener pop in every so often isn’t stopping anyone getting a plot. Nobody is more deserving of a plot than another person.

What stops being getting plots is people who have no time for them refusing to give up and coming down to just blitz it every time they get a cultivation notice just clinging on to them barely. It’s councils and reps not letting plots out and letting them just get more and more overgrown that keeps you waiting. It’s not being bothered to push for more allotment spaces that stops you having a plot. Not Doris with a bit of help once a week.

One of our plot holders is married to a professional gardener and landscaper imagine the outrage.

YABU

"say something about it's hard work but worth the effort."

She never said it was her hard work. And it is worth the effort of the gardener she is employing.

Focus on your own life.

I'm with @OneForMeToo

I'm a fairly new allotmenteer. After being on the list for years, most of the plots here are untended or barely tended. Many plots are practically covered in sheds and cabins and "chalets" surrounded by fences and padlocked gates. Some plots are used as storage by businesses with a token row of cabbages. The FB group is about 25% posts about "our foreign friends'" crimes on the allotments.

I long for a proper allotment committee that enforces the rules in our contracts - traditional plots with no fences, one small shed and one small green house, that are actually worked.

I like fences but only scaffolding net low fences or 1/2ft high slat fences. I like firm boundary’s so there’s no fighting you should hear it some time’s. That’s my 1inch no it’s mine 😅. They walked on the edge of my plot.

We are strict on sheds due to people being killed in arson attacks because they where living in them and fast asleep at the time.

Is yours council owned? I find they can be hit and miss on how much the council is willing to force the issue even when reps want something done about and can point to rule breaks in the tenancy rules.

Committee ones can also becomes very who you know not how good are you at tending your allotment. It can be a struggle.

I like fences but only scaffolding net low fences or 1/2ft high slat fences. I like firm boundary’s so there’s no fighting you should hear it some time’s. That’s my 1inch no it’s mine 😅. They walked on the edge of my plot.
I think ours are supposed to have a 2ft strip of grass between plots, with 1ft on either side. I'd like to give this a go rather than the endless ramshackle fences made of pallets.

Ours is council-owned, but there's been no resources for years, so the chair of the committee pretty much runs it single-handed. This has pluses and minuses. For a start, about 20 plots are owned by 3 or 4 people; the chair has 9 himself. I think it comes about by people offering to take on un-worked/"un-rentable" plots but I think more effort should be put in to making them rentable.

The shed thing is a worry. Some are like mini houses here. Reminds DP of dachas. Reminds me of those compounds were women are kept hostage for 20 years

I'd love to know my neighbour's secret, I've seen him dig up a bottle of wine on more than one occasion. No grapevine, he just digs the bottle of wine up from the lotment 🤔 I can tell that it's top secret as he keeps looking all around him nervously as he digs. He then races off into his shed clutching his bottle & comes out a while later looking really pleased with himself.

Ours used to have those strips but slowly over the years from what I can work out way before I came onto site most seem to of disappeared. It starts when one person needs a fence (small dog/children’s) and so they fence inside the grass path then that plot gets relet sometime after with the fence still in place as does the neighbour plot who then takes over the grass strip as it looks like part of their plot. Plot holders here are notorious for moving the boundary markers so the extent some plots just don’t have one and you have to check the numbers each side to work it out.

Some of our plots go out in terrible states due to how long the eviction process is but we then let them for free until sorted and can bring in a skip/strimmers and a rotavator once it’s cleared enough of anything that might damage the equipment.

Wait until she's being smug and drop it like the bombshell it is

I'm admiring her oeuvre, there must be a way I can utilise this .....

😂😂😂😂😂

I would stay quiet and keep my powder dry.

But you must have found it very satisfying.

Hire her gardener and have him come when she's usually outside - then watch for her reaction!

This gave me a good laugh, OP! I hope you have some fun with it. Or you could be truly evil and promise to keep her secret in return for an endless supply of her magnificent produce ...

@ipushmyfingersintomyeyes

From one messy and full of weeds allotment owner to another, I would keep this one under my hat and let her talk and talk about her hard work. Sometimes knowing the secret is all the fun part! Once its out there, its over with.

This!!

at the cheek of her though!! That’s just not DONE!!!!

Keep flicking your slugs over the border.

Fellow allotmenteer - my DH is a gardener and our plot looks wild at the moment. Looked fab when we were in strict lock down and we had little else to do (home education aside).

She may have a hidden disability and isn't able to do all that needs to be done herself.

Or she may have been referring to the gardeners hard work.

Or she may just hate some jobs and gets help with those.

Unless she's being a total bitch about the state of yours, op, I'd leave her alone. You said yourself she's perfectly pleasant, so no need to make petty digs.

I'm trying to figure out how you can bring Lady Chatterley into all this...

Is this whole thing a Lady Chatterley and Mellor’s-style metaphor? ‘Strimming her plot’ and ‘waist deep in bindweed’? Or have I spent too long reading Barbara Amiel’s autobiography in the Daily Mail?

There was a man there strimming her plot

I am fairly broad minded but Its a phrase I have not heard before

Being caught doing such things is of course deeply offensive and could lead to a prosecution under The Sexual Offences Act (2003) - certainly if such an act was seen, or could be seen, by minors

I would mention that you have met her gardener, as a fellow plot holder I would not be able to contain my wee comment! :-)

That's brilliant. She is an utter genius!

Definitely have a little bit of (lighthearted and friendly) fun with it!!

Don’t be mean . You know nothing about her circumstances. She could have a hidden disability and be unable to do the work but find it a safe , calm place to rest. You confronting her or taking the piss would spoil that. It’s NOYB.

Am I being unreasonable that this wasnt about a buried body :(

DO IT!!! 🤣

Omy goodness id keep this little nuggett under your belt. But have fun with it /her

This is quite pathetic. So? She has a gardner And she likes to go there to relax on a bench, do the odd bit of pruning, or whatever she can bb or feels like doing.Are you sure it a dirty little secret and that she wouldn't tell you if you asked her. Did you think she actually did it all herself, when as you say, she is always just relaxing or doing little bits
I wish people could just be kinder to each other.