‘Filomena’
That 9th January 2021, we looked out of the window and saw the white mantle covering everything. As well as trying to take in what the snow would mean for our daily lives (not being able to go to work, the problems of going out to run everyday errands), we quickly wondered how the allotment would be. What had happened to our cabbages? And there was also the uncertainty about how so much snow would have affected the communal areas: the greenhouse, the composter, etc.
Our real concern, faced with the possibility of having lost these communal areas, was not the material loss but rather what would happen to our life on the allotment.
And, sure enough, the greenhouse was devastated. The plastic structure hadn´t withstood the weight of the snow.
But, as always, there came a calm after the storm and once Filomena had passed, we got organised to repair the damaged done by the now famous storm, realising that this adversity didn´t mean a setback in our relationships but, on the contrary, another focus point for the gardeners to recover our communal areas.
It was the allotment itself which encouraged us to recover it for when we cleared the snow from the plots, our cabbages were still there eager to grow.