There are cast iron pipes still from our fireplace to an external greenhouse, long since battered down to a red-brick base by a single century of wind and rain.
The vibrant white-painted carcass of the oak greenhouse frame still stands, like the blanched ribs of a whale on the Skeleton Coast, but no vines have ever clambered upon them. Whatever those early Victorians used as paint has outlasted everything. It never flakes and despite its age ladybirds like to gather on the wood. They were late last year. Funny how I remembered that.
A robin nests in one of the pipes, even though it has now cracked in places. The other is home to smaller creatures with three, four or even fifty times as many legs. I see small grey mini armadillos under pots and slates, doing their scurry thing. When I put the slate back down, I am sure they sit back down again. Job done, panic over, let’s play armadillo games or whatever.
When I go to sort the wilderness that became of the ancient raspberries and blackcurrants that stretch through the whale ribs, the robin comes to claim her treats. Or stand her ground, because I have yet to work this one out.
Overhead is the canopy of cherry trees. Good for pickling in brandy, but that is all. In late June they will be stripped in a single day by a ‘bird raid’ that no radar could ever predict. We never see or hear it. At 11am they were still there, at 2pm, hanging the washing out they are gone. I just have more brandy spare unto Christmas.
Below the cherries, is a deep dark box-hedge that runs into bay and laurel and holly. They grow together, in some disorganised manner that works. I used to know their Latin names, but now just remember Taxus Bacatta even though no Victorian would ever spread Yew Tree seeds here.
In that dark, damp, patch the wren nests safely, just below my bedroom window. She, or maybe he guarding over her, is the first to broadcast each morning. Lungs the size of a small pea, they fill the dawn with Everything.
The black cast iron fence, now leaning, is joined by the honeysuckle to the knackered greenhouse to the cherries above, before peeping out and reaching ever higher above, climbing to the ISS if it could. Under all of this the robin and the wren feed their broods for the 450th time. We could gouge this dark, brooding, shabby place away and shape it into a human expectation of what a garden looks like.
But our souls would be lost forever. Best we grow with nature, in some disorganised manner that works.