Peculiar Jungle (Notes from a Polish Allotment extract)
As an antidote to life in Warsaw, the color and vivacity of the allotments had caught our attention. The space of them had opened our eyes so wide that we went about acquiring one at the end of May, along with the allotment’s domek, or “little house.” Monika was at work while I got a grip on the basement ghosts and next gathered the dead spiders and bees from the back room in order to evict them.
Maintenance completed, I walked around the allotments and observed the equanimity of gardens. From the pathways, you took peace in, and then reflected some of the serene indifference back at this odd nature. Asparaguses and ferns were unfurling, berries grew along fences and trellises, and the immature cones of conifers throbbed pink and green on the spring breeze.
In this allotment wedge of greenery, in the heart of Warsaw’s Mokotów district, our plot occupied a central position where one felt suddenly far from the quotidian world of cities, and safely hidden as if in a peculiar jungle.
Sitting there, I saw that there was a kind of logic in having everyone’s gardens in the same place together, especially those of apartment dwellers in blocks. But far beyond logic was the expanse of imagination which a gardener employed working in their own secret garden.
Then time passed and, thinking to write about the gardens, things started to look different, because you had to skirmish with the private battles and methods and whims of each gardener. And also you had to treat their spirits like children in Arcadia.
Though each parcel was quite private and unique, I began to understand some of the whispering stories which nonetheless passed amongst the branches and bushes…