Why a bean needs earth and water

I have a small gang of sparrows in my front garden who move between the bird bath, mock orange, fushia and Liz's next door. They wake me up around 6, but I'm ready since the sun came out again.
A winter of rain, now the coronavirus and with it a pandemic of stupidity. At least there's the allotment.
Mum tells me all my grandfather wanted was a small-holding but he never got it, he was too busy trying to keep his seven children fed and looked after. A single parent, a poor Irish immigrant, he grew potatoes in the back garden but that was the extent of it.
I had an allotment first in my twenties but didn't put the time in. I was busy drinking, I was in a band, I had places to go. Then when my children were little I had the chance of sharing a plot. It's the one I still pay for - same shed, same greenhouse, repaired endlessly.
I've only just finished last year's potatoes - I stored them where the mice couldn't get them after my lesson last year. Not in the cellar!
I've started planting the seed I bought from the Real Seed Company - organic and not GM, so I can save that seed again from the plants I grow. Unlike Bayer (formerly Monsanto), the bio giant grabbing patents left right and centre, the Real Seed Company is bringing back old species and boosting them to protect biodiversity and the gardener's right to self-sufficiency.

My nasturtium seedlings are on the table in my garden and they're the colour of the flowers in this photo, taken last year when I was working at Wisley RHS gardens. I'd hoped for another project this summer, but the pandemic's put paid to that. In fact, there's no work apart from the allotment.
Yesterday, distanced by the width of our plots, several gardeners got down to the serious work of preparing the ground and planting.

Image: Imperial War Museum,
an allotment in Kensington Gardens
1942

One of my gardening books, setting out work for each month, the planning of what goes where, how much yield to expect from seed, by weight, was written at the end of WW2, when the number of allotments in the UK had been increased enormously to boost domestic food production. It was named Dig for Victory,  that war campaign and everything was dug up for allotments and growing food - this included gardens and parks.
So when a note on the gate said that Brighton and Hove Council had decided to turn the water off for allotments I wondered who made the decision, what could be a greater priority than producing food, if they'd missed out on contemporary history, even the debates about food and air miles. I wondered why it was so hard for people to join stuff up.
And this is the most joined up thing I and many others have got in the absence of work, income (no pension - that too was snatched away), satisfying the need to separate myself from people and provide food. A seed is one of the most responsive items we know of - it will grow and produce a lettuce, or courgette, or a bean, a pea. But it needs earth and water.
And it turns out, happily, the note on the gate was some kind of mistake, bad information, and although my email to the allotment service was treated with contempt, fortunately a councillor also has an allotment. So she got the the bottom of it. It seems there's still a member of staff in Cityparks who knows where the stopcocks are. I hope they've drawn a little diagram, in the circumstances.