Nature Notes (i)

The neighbours next door have cleared their garden at last. We overlook this garden (if you crane your neck forty-five degrees to the left) and I stand at the window for inordinate amounts of time, twitching the curtains and meditating enviously on the waste of good ground out there. All winter there has grown a sordid bloom of plastic bags, a turf war has been fought between the squirrels and the dogs for lavatorial rights, a huge trampoline has remained unbounced on, and a rolling-pin has mysteriously appeared in the midst of this all.

Now, overnight, the mess has gone. I wonder what's next after the overhaul. Borders? Decking? Perhaps the best place to start would be the balding grass: at the moment it looks like the crops have failed and the mud is winning out. I have no talent for gardening, but were I to be suddenly granted such a space I like to think I would rush out and start learning the rudiments. At the far end I'd dig a vegetable patch - I remember that being my parents' first action when we moved house - and get busy turning over the earth and forking it through, letting it exhale. Then I'd hie me hence to Wampstead library and get out some gardening books. And when the summer came I'd buy a deckchair, lug the pile of reading matter outside (they would have been renewed regularly on my library card in the meantime) and get to work, procrastinating.