The allotment is a grid of mud and rot.

The allotment is a grid of mud and rot. Early spring doesn't arrive as a bloom; it arrives as a softening of the ground, a wet surrender of topsoil that clings to the soles of boots like heavy, grey paste.

In Plot 42, the potato bed is a graveyard of last year’s debris. Shriveled stalks, blackened by frost, lean at exhausted angles against the wire fencing. They are porous and brittle, crumbling into dust when touched. Nearby, a discarded plastic bucket sits half-buried in a rut. It is filmed with a matte layer of algae and grit, its handle cracked where the winter wind caught it.

The air smells of wet earth and old compost—a thick, fermented scent that coats the back of the throat. A crow lands on a fence post, its feathers dull and ruffled by the drizzle. It doesn't call out. It simply watches.

A rhythmic dripping sounds from the eaves of a lean-to: water hitting a rusted tin tray with a hollow, metallic *tink*. The rust is blooming in orange flakes, peeling away from the metal like dead skin. No one is planting yet. The work is currently just in the waiting—the slow, chemical breakdown of last year's waste into this year’s potential. It is a heavy, silent digestion.