When we first got our allotment, I drew a plan, carefully scaled down, of where each of our 10'x10' beds would go. When we started digging, we carefully measured 10 feet in both directions. Or at least we thought we did. And we thought that was good enough. When we started to dig our second and now third beds, they didn't seem to match up with the first, no matter how many times we compared them using our bright blue string. After much confusion we eventually realised that our first bed was not a square, as we'd thought, but a rhombus. To make matters worse, our second bed was even worse than a rhombus: it had wonky sides . And not a right angle in sight. It was very confusing. After literally minutes of thinking, we realised that we'd gone wrong right at the very beginning of our allotment adventure. The boundary we'd (not very carefully) staked out with bamboo canes at the top of the plot to divide us from our neighbour was not perpendicular to the long sides of the plot.
Once we realised this, Andrew decided that it didn't really matter if all of our plots were rhombuses. He said the vegetables wouldn't mind the absence of right angles. I tried to go along with him but after a few minutes I gave in to my inner perfectionist and insisted that we re-do all the measuring, do a bit more digging, and make sure that our plots had right angles. They aren't squares, they are rectangles. That's fine. At least all the paths will be straight. Andrew forgave me eventually. It was only an extra hour's work.
Here's Andrew making sure the sides are perpendicular.
haha... I love this. I think vegetables would miss the right angles... but then I can't see how everyone wouldn't find that a difficult concept!
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