these take me "way" back

I've not grown these now for many years, in fact nearly forty.  My last attempt was just after we got married we had just purchased our first house with no garden, we lived in  Governor road Portland Dorset.

I was given the use of a garden a few streets away off of an old lady her husband had died  a few years earlier  and the back half of her garden was left barren about the size of an allotment. The agreement was  I could use it providing she could have some of it's produce, hmm, I thought how much can one little old lady eat, ha ha. I was to find out the hard way. 

Unfortunately she  and her  friends  helped themselves  constantly to my  vegetables and we  had very little from it over that season.

It was getting beyond the joke I was doing all the hard work and only left with the smallest bits and pieces, left overs.  

I remember I had some lovey cauliflowers one in particular I thought  that will be just right for next weekend  Sunday roast, my runner beans were getting near ready for picking, I had planned to pick them also for  Sunday lunch.

However mid week we suffered a really terrible storm  totally out of season for the time of year as it was the last weekend of August  it was  a real bad one with very very  high gale force winds which burnt all the runner beans beyond being edible totally destroying them all, yes you guessed the rest when I  went round a few days later  she had cut my last cauliflower.

That was the end of my gardening using someone else s garden.   I simply took all my gardening tools and walked away and never returned not even to tidy up after the storm.

It's been really nice watching these grow this year knowing there all going to be ours.  Anyone tries to pinch them I'll pin there foot to the ground with a garden fork, ha ha.