Daucus Carota subsp. Sativus - Part 1

 

 

I stare down at the packet in my hands, turning it over and over.

'I'm not sure I want to eat purple carrots' I say to the man on the other end of the phone.

'Sorry love it's all we have left. Your list said carrots, so we sent you what we had. It's Lockdown, and everyone has become an amateur market gardener' he replies with a laugh in his voice.

'But do they taste purple?'

He sighs. 'How does purple taste?'

'Like blueberries or blackberries. Berrylike.'

'No, they taste like carrots, delicious carrots. They're a heritage variety.'

'What about the red ones?'

'Carrots. They taste like carrots.'

'And the yellow ones.'

'Look love they're carrots. They all taste like carrots. If you don't want them, you can bring them back.'

'I can't; I'm self-isolating.'

I can hear him moving around as he is talking to me.

'Well, you can bring them back when it all over. I've got to go I have other orders to make up.'

'OK. Sorry. I will think about it.'

'You do that' he says and puts the phone down without saying goodbye.

I stare at the phone. How incredibly rude, I think. What's happening to the world? What indeed. The world is in the grip of madness brought on by fear of death, and here am I stuck with a packet of multi-coloured carrot seeds.

 

I put the packet down and click the kettle on to make a cup of coffee. What to do? Should I return them or give them a go? Who knows how long it will be before I can replace them. They say we will be in this situation for three months, but others say six months to a year. In the thrall of uncertainty, I am procrastinating over planting a few carrots. 

 

The kettle clicks off, but I ignore it. Decision made. I will sort through the seeds and remove the red and purple ones. I pick up the packet of seeds and cautiously tear off the top. I peer inside. There are no seeds in sight just a small white packet. I turn the packet upside down and the inner packet plops onto the side. I pick it up and rub my fingers over it. The seeds' texture translates through my fingers, and I reach into the kitchen drawer for the scissors and snip off the top.

 

The seeds nestled inside are beige. Beige! I'd expected small clusters of purple, red and yellow jewels. How will I know which ones are purple or red? Damn, now I can't return them. Coffee, I need coffee.

 

Coffee made, I wander out into the garden. It is unseasonably warm for the time of year. A godsend they say, imagine a lockdown in the winter months. I can, I try not to. Round at the greenhouse area, I cast my eye over the raised beds covered in a green carpet of rampant weeds and rotting tomato stems. The tomato plants had been a gift from a friend. She said that all I had to do was water them and then if I had any excess the local shop would buy them from me. I had watered them enthusiastically, but they split. They became vine-rotted, not vine-ripened, and, apparently, there's no demand for that particular variety in the local shop.

 

I slide back the greenhouse door and fight my way through the cobwebs that provide a shield from the heat of the sun. Gloves, somewhere there are some gloves and also a digging implement. I discover a pair of mildewed gloves underneath a stainless steel rack. They are rigid with age, and I dread to think what beasts lie within. No, I can't bring myself to put them on. Then I remember the supply of medical gloves by the front door, essential to wear before handling any deliveries. I place all deliveries into the quarantine area for 72 hours. I will get the medical gloves, but I need something for digging. In an old apple box, I find a trowel, rusted and misshapen. It will have to do.

 

I retrace my steps to the house, pull on a pair of latex gloves and collect the packet of seeds. OK, I can do this.

 

Half an hour later, I have cleared the bed and disposed of the rotting vegetation in the brown bin. I admire my handiwork. This gardening lark is easy. I extract the packet of seeds from my jeans' back pocket and sit down on the edge of the raised bed to read the instructions.

'Before you plant your carrot seeds, make sure you deeply till the soil. Breaking up the soil so that it becomes loose will help the carrot seeds sprout deep roots. Plant the seeds about half-inch deep in the soil, and 1 inch apart. Space your rows at least 15 inches apart.'

Deeply till, deeply till, what on earth does that mean? I miss my Dad. I used to be able to call him to ask him things like this. I pull my mobile out of my pocket and type 'deeply till' into the search bar.

'Nizar Qabbani — 'Don't love deeply, till you make sure that the other part loves you with the same depth, because the depth of your love today, is the de...'

Oh, so it is something to do with the half-inch depth and loving what you are doing. I guess it means I have to plant all of the seeds with equal love. Well, I feel pretty ambivalent about the seeds so I won't have any difficulty projecting the same level of ambivalence on all of them. Perhaps some people love purple carrots, but I'm pretty sure I won't.

 

I had already broken up the soil to at least half an inch deep when I removed the weeds. Now all I have to do is plant the seeds. Half an inch deep that is an exact measurement. I need to be precise. In my mind's eye, I see a box full of my son's old school equipment, notebooks, diaries, and a wooden ruler. I will have to find it.

 

Back in the house, I go upstairs to the junk room. Balancing precariously on an old Lloyd-loom chair, I push open the loft hatch and risk losing my fingers as I release the vicious loft ladder. The screeching metal descends, narrowly missing me, and crashes onto the floor. It's energy spent the ladder now becomes a creaking feeble object that can barely take my weight. And each perilous step is accompanied by shudders and moans. At the top, I reach out into the dark, muscle memory guides my hand to the place that the spiders lay in wait for a hand to flick the light switch. It's cold up here despite the warmth of the day, and I gently manoeuvre myself onto a board. I must remember not to fall through the ceiling. 

 

The loft is full of boxes. I glance over them and see the years of my past life stretching before me. I've lived here for twenty years, and Joe left school ten years ago. Therefore, the box must be somewhere in the middle. I dig around, and lo and behold there's a box marked. 'Joe's things - PRIVATE - DO NOT OPEN'. Of course, I open it. I need a ruler. It is as I remembered, for a moment time pulls me back, and happiness flutters in me. On the top is the wooden ruler, dusty and faded, but it is marked out in inches on one side. I close the box back up and retrace my steps back down the ladder and out into the garden.

 

I make a hole in the soil with the trowel and measure its depth. 1 inch. Too deep. I fill it in slightly and measure again, 3/8 of an inch. Not deep enough. I remove some soil. 3/4 of an inch. Too deep. I put some earth back in. 3/8 of an inch again. I slam my trowel down. This part of gardening is not as easy as it would at first seem. OK, I pick out a few crumbs of soil with my hand and measure again. 1/2 an inch. Perfect. 

 

I pick out the foil packet and with great difficulty extract a single seed. Which way round should I plant it? Pointy side in, and if so, which pointy side? Or if it has to be the flat side which flat side. I reread the packet, but there are no instructions about which way up to plant the seed. I decide to plant alternative seeds pointy then flat. Then I stand a reasonable chance of twenty-five per cent of them coming up. I place the seed into the hole, pointy side down and cover it over. I sigh, one down, one hundred and ninety-nine to go.

 

'Plant them one inch apart'. Shit now I've covered the seed over I don't know exactly where it is. I try to uncover it. I can't find it, so I start all over again. This time I measure one inch from the first seed and make another hole exactly half an inch deep and plant the seed on the flat side, before covering up the last hole and moving on to the next one. Thirty-four seeds later I have reached the edge of the bed and cover up the final seed. What now? 'Space your rows at least 15 inches apart.'  I go for 17 inches to ensure that there are at least 15 inches between rows. 

 

A couple of hours later, my bed is full, and I have seeds leftover. I will keep them for another year. I stretch my aching back and feel strangely calm. Calmer than I've felt for weeks. Concentrating on the carrot seeds, I haven't once thought about the virus or Lockdown. 

Jaqui Fairfax

Image by Nikolas Nicolic