Il faut cultiver notre jardin ...

We had to read Candide (in French) for Ordinary French at Uni. I can remember a wet afternoon sitting upstairs in the leather-seated library in the old QM Union at the top of University Avenue, coal fires burning in the hearths at each end of the long room that ran the length of the building, trying to make sense of Voltaire, of Cunégonde and the Old Lady, and telling myself that even if I only understood about a quarter of it I was nevertheless being a real student, sitting in such a place reading French ...

I later discovered I actually concentrated far better in the more mundane surroundings of our house, with the added benefit of a mother, just home from a morning's teaching, who could help.

And why all this delving into the past? Because on this persistently grey, humid, close day we decided it was time to tidy up the garden before the rain came back. In the lower picture you can see Himself contemplating his handiwork with the hedge trimmer, among the clutter of pots that I had carefully moved away from his feet, the cable, and the falling lumps of privet. That done, he cut the grass.  I, meanwhile, had been attacking the huge and very jaggy climbing rose that mingles with the ivy on the wall at the back gate to make coming and going a hazardous business. It's still bigger than I want it to be, but it's as much as I was capable of in one go, and at least we can use the stairs without having an eye put out. I also sort of tidied up the path from the drooping loosestrife that is fine until the rain weighs it down, though as it's supposed to rain heavily in the night and again tomorrow I shall doubtless find I've not done enough.

You will realise from all this that our garden is (a) pretty small and (b) a little wild. We don't really take much time to change it. The lower photo shows the back lane just outside our drive-in, proving that the lane is even wilder than the garden. Actually all that buddleia is theoretically the responsibility of the people across the lane who live in another street altogether, but they never do anything to it. I've been out already this year with the loppers, for when the buddleia gets woody it scratches our car as we reverse out. I've obviously encouraged it to grow.

Enough of the bucolic ramblings. All this slash and burn stuff has made every muscle in my body moan slightly. I'm away for a hot shower.