The next hole I planted a Crown Prince squash. At the moment it was just a short vine, less than eighteen inches long, with small hairy leaves, but I could imagine it; lush and full, curling among the sweetcorn stems and producing football sized, bluish-grey pumpkins with bright orange flesh. Stored correctly they would last until the middle of winter.
Fifty minutes later the sweetcorn were all in. The bed still looked bare, the plants tiny and forlorn in the expanse of soil but I wasn’t fooled, if I planted them any closer they would crowd each other out and I wouldn’t get as high a yield.
I walked over to the peas, and ran my hand through the plants, searching for pods big enough to pick. They had been planted in February and were flowering continuously, producing long fat pods full of peas. I had been harvesting them before they were fully mature, so that the plants would keep flowering a little longer. Peas were good at sensing when they had produced seeds and would shortly after shrivel and die. I wanted to put that off for as long as possible.
I shelled the pods as I went along, stripping the peas into a bowl and chucking the empty pods onto the compost heap. When I was done, I went into the greenhouse to pick up some more bean seedlings. I had been planting them, a few at a time, in any available space. I glanced at the label; these were climbing beans. I grabbed a couple of bamboo poles and some string, and strolled over to the bed along the back fence. A couple of minutes later I had a tepee of poles and began pushing them deep into the ground. The moist soil allowed them to slide in easily, until I began hitting stones in the clay. Time for some excavation work.
It was a day pretty much like every other this past week; June was the busiest time of year for gardening and I was determined to get it all done. I was working hard in the mornings before the knockers started roaming the streets. Then I would go in and relax for the rest of the day, doing small chores and surfing the internet until they left. It was still early, and I hadn’t heard any knockers yet, but I decided to take a quick break. I picked a couple of leaves of peppermint to make tea and went online. Reports showed that the government had survived, but one of the consequences of the government’s new emergency powers was the side-lining of the other political parties. No longer did the BBC talk of Conservatives or Labour but only of ‘The Government’. It made sense; they needed to get things done quickly and there wasn’t time for debate or questions. COBR and its subcommittees were running almost everything. Some of the new laws they produced were very restrictive; even allowing the government to imprison people who threatened the order and stability. There was some chatter that they were shipping journalists and activists out to isolated areas and abandoning them there, far away from food or clean water. I took it all with a pinch of salt and concentrated on my garden.
The last thing on my list was the tomatoes. They were an early cropping variety called Matina, maybe not ideal as they were prone to blight, but they had one very unusual property: their skins peeled off easily. When ripe I could use my teeth to peel the outer skin right off, leaving just the juicy sweet flesh behind. They were my favourite tomato and I had started growing them in March, before the outbreak. It had been a bit too early and they were growing tall and lanky, and really needed to be planted out.
I dug a deep hole, double the depth of the pot, and buried the plant deep. Sometimes tomatoes would grow more roots from the stem, giving it a bigger, stronger root system. I wound the stem up the twisted poles and stood back. That would do. Hopefully, with some decent sun and warm nights, the leaves would bulk out and they might start to look a little healthier.
I pinched off the side branches from the tomatoes, took them back to the greenhouse, and pushed them into pots of soil. They would root and give me more plants. I looked around the still crowded shelves and at the trays on the floor. Maybe I should stop sowing seeds; there was not a scrap of room left, and some of the plants were getting quite big.
I walked over to the last of the L shaped beds, which was covered in fleece. Lifting up a corner, I peeked inside. The carrots were coming on nicely, with thick ferny growth on top. The carrot roots themselves were beginning to bulk out; they were a cold-tolerant variety and had been optimistically planted in February under fleece. They had taken ages to germinate but the head start had let them take full advantage of the heat wave. I made a note to add some mulch to keep the shoulders of the carrots from going green and I hunted around to find the largest. I pulled a couple up for lunch, along with some spring onions, then I extracted the packet of carrot seed from a pocket and sprinkled a couple in the disturbed earth. I pressed it flat and pulled down the fleece, looking around in satisfaction. Progress was good. I went inside, wishing vaguely that there was someone to share it with. Phoning home was ok, but I wanted them to see it in person. Just occasionally, even I needed company; I was beginning to feel lonely.
The news had said that the army would begin distributing emergency rations today, and I was eager to get online and see how it was going. However, when I opened the BBC News Live, I was dismayed. The reporters were using drones to film from overhead, and there was a lot of chaos around the distribution; mobs of people swarming the trucks, grabbing boxes of ration packs. It was madness; if people had stayed calm, they would all have been given food. The drone zoomed in on people fighting, other people running and yet others smashing windows and looting shops. Seen from above, they were just faceless blobs with limbs flailing, but I could imagine the desperation and fear.
There had been a lot of social media pressure calling for the army to be used to restore order, but the government had been adamant that they weren’t trained for civil unrest. I could see in the videos that they weren’t using their weapons. I watched as one truck was overrun and the soldiers retreated away down the road, leaving it behind. It looked like the city had descended into complete anarchy.
I wondered if it would spread. What would I do if it did? Would I leave? I was probably better off where I was. The electricity, water, and gas were still running, if intermittently, with the rolling blackouts happening at the same time each day. I had food and shelter, which wouldn’t be guaranteed anywhere else. I was not one of those survivalists that could shoot rabbits and forage in the woods. If I left, I would have to find a way of taking food with me, and I would have to be aiming to get to a particular place with supplies. But if the chaos moved this way I would need to be prepared.
I called home to Vik. He answered after a couple of rings, ‘Hey Z, what’s up?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I’m just watching some videos on the riots and food distribution.’
‘Why do you watch that stuff?’ he asked, ‘you know it only makes you depressed.’
‘I just wonder what’s happening,’ I said, ‘how my students are doing, and the people from work… I miss them.’
‘Do you have friends you can go and see?’ asked Vik, ‘people near you who you could visit?’
‘No, not nearby; my neighbour has left and I don’t know any of the others on my street well enough.’ I replied, ‘it would be nice to see some of the guys from tai chi or friends I know in South Oxhey, but it just doesn’t feel safe outside.’
‘Have you tried online?’ asked Vik, ‘I log on to several forums each day; connecting with people keeps me sane.’
It was a good idea, I had been looking at the news sites and reading Facebook, but I made a note to start looking for community groups and forums that I could connect with. We talked desultorily about things for a bit, I think Vik was trying to cheer me up, but eventually I rang off and went back out to the garden.