Blank sheet garden

This is our new back garden:

It’s a bit of a dump, isn’t it?  The builders have trodden a lot of the grass into the soil, which seems to be a heavy clay, heavily compacted, very muddy.  If you’ve seen my previous gardening posts, (e.g. Garden, from 2012) you’ll see that this new garden is a fraction of the size of the old one, and really quite boring.

It’s actually quite exciting.  It’s like a blank sheet of paper.  I have ideas and dreams, and because it’s much smaller, I might manage to realise them here.  I’m thinking … wildflowers and veggies … a small pond for amphibians and maybe fish (maybe it will help drain the soil?) … an apple tree trained up the south-facing fence … a hedge of hawthorn, hazel & maybe holly to mask the compost bins and feed the birds …  the possibilities are endless in a blank sheet garden.

Except it’s not exactly blank.  That’s some sort of oak tree, there at the back, and something’s been living in that compost bin.  There’s a laurel bush and some sort of evergreen, broad-leafed tree and a magnificent yucca-type thing, and who knows what’s dormant in the soil, waiting for spring, amongst all the chilled invertebrates? I’m not too hopeful about garden birds, being about 100 yards from the sea, but I’ve already seen a robin and some blackbirds.  It’s not blank – it’s full of life.  And, just like the old garden, or any piece of land I might inhabit, it’s not mine.