Script quote on the ribs

The greenhouse glass finally went in on Tuesday, four panes at a time, and Mr Okafor from the allotments held each one while the glazier worked. I thought you would want to know that before anything else. Your grandmother's seed labels are still in the tin on the potting bench, the ones she wrote in that looping hand with a carpenter's pencil. Most say things like runner beans or early leeks. The one at the back says she believed she could, and underneath, in smaller letters, so she did.

I asked Mr Okafor whether he thought she had meant it as a joke. He said no, that she had lettered it the week the cold frame collapsed, when everyone told her a rebuild at seventy-eight was foolish. She got the frame up herself with two bricks and a length of ash, and she had it producing lettuce by April. You and I both thought she was being stubborn. Perhaps she was, but I think she was also writing instructions to herself.

I put the label in my coat pocket and walked it down to the shed, where your old school jumper is still hanging. I have pinned it above the window. The light comes through the new glass now and lands on the pencil marks, and I find I can read them without my spectacles.

Come up at the weekend if you can. Bring the good secateurs. There is a bed by the wall that needs clearing, and I would like it cleared by someone who does not think it cannot be done.

Love, Aunt Win