I remember it was a bright sunny day and Mam was throwing feed to the black bantams strutting and clucking in their run. Wires from it crossed the end of our garden to a post in a garden of a house on Milton Street and from that post to one in Milton Street itself. On Wesley Street a telegraph post stood next to the first houses above Len James` garage. Each day I went to the top of the garden with my Mam to feed them in their wired run. Apart from some ancient fantail pigeons my favourites were Banties (Bantams).
We also had a pig but the end of her I leave to the imagination. Various livestock had always been kept in the back gardens to provide eggs and a cockerel for Christmas – though the murder, feather plucking and disembowelment of one of my friends leaned me heavily towards vegetarianism at an early age! It is not that people were cruel necessity demanded it. Prizes I cannot recall but Dad had several red 1st prize cards and we got something to eat of course. Each year the mayor or some such character came to judge the efforts of men who worked, fire-watched, and Dug for Victory. Potatoes were a staple crop along with cabbage and peas, rhubarb, celery, lettuce, runner beans, black currants, leeks and one year my Dad grew something called sweet corn which everybody watched come to fruition – though it tasted nice it was eaten with some suspicion because we hadn’t a clue what it really was. These latter were bounded by Bennerley Rec. Between the Smithy and the Laundry was a track leading to allotments which reached from behind the Bridge Inn to those reached from Richmond Avenue. Just below where Truman Street joins Bridge Street was a shop and nearer the bridge an old Smithy (With all the Blacksmiths forge and bellows). At the top of Wesley Street across to Ash Street were allotments. This was called the Dig for Victory Campaign. As elsewhere Cotmanhay had allotments on which we grew our own food. One major ploy of the enemy was to starve the population and U boat attacks on the Merchant Fleet were horrendous.
#Garden story best memories how to#
In 1943 I went to Aberdeen and was a pioneer in working out how to store potatoes indoors because there was no wheat so there was no straw.
It was used up to sow runways all over the place. Supplies of grass seed dried up at that time completely. To get a plot people had to apply to the headquarters at St Andrews House. There was a limited number of seeds and plants and I used to take some seed from my own garden to give to people. Most folk in Edinburgh weren’t gardeners and we showed them what to do. Ground was dug up and made into allotments at Blackford hill and Inverleith Park and round about the Meadows in the heart of Edinburgh. The same thing happened in the 1914-18 war. I was enlisted as a gardens allotment volunteer and would go round advising people how to grow food. Written by the public and gathered by the BBCĪt the beginning of the war I was registered as a botanist at Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.
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