The back garden is a bit of a mess. Again. Overgrown, weed ridden. That rusty, creeper-submitting trampoline in the corner that nobody’s been on in a decade. You get the picture.
It’s lovely.
I’m rewilding, you see. Rewilding, as you all know, is
the return of a habitat to a natural state for
purposes of conservation and environmental improvement. So that’s what’s
happening down my back garden, missus. The bees and the little bugs and the hedgehogs
and the… the… worms, and such are all being given a natural, un-tampered-with
place in which to placidly co-exist…
Yeah, right.
You’re fooling nobody, Armstrong. Nobody.
That garden has always been a bit of
a mess. Not so much because you’re a lazy bastard but because you’re not all
that committed to order and beauty in your environs. Certainly not committed
enough to put the hard hours into it.
At this moment, Midsummer, the place
is a riot of brambles and tall weeds in full bloom. Winter almost comes as a
relief sometimes, when the growing finally stops and falls back for a while.
My neighbour only makes matters worse.
He’s one of those tidy buggers. A beautiful garden with everything in its
place. He’s the best neighbour in the world, just too darned organised. He’s
making me look bad.
“He’s retired”, I say to myself, “he
has time of all this raking and bagging and clipping and such.” But there I go again,
only fooling myself. If I were retired, I don’t think I’d be mulching with the
same gusto that he is. In fact, I don’t think I’d be mulching at all.
So the garden brings bees and birds
aplenty. It also brings a regular visit from that other tiny burrowing creature,
Guilt. I find it hard to enjoy my garden without feeling guilty about it. It is
a symbol of my general uselessness. I mean, look at me. I’m sitting here typing
this crap when I could be out there dead-heading something or even just cleaning
out the garage for Chrissakes.
And things mount up. That universal
tendency toward Atrophy is evident everywhere around my homestead. Every day
that nothing is done leaves more to do. I become morbidly fascinated by
abandoned buildings and ruins. The process of how all neglected things follow
only one course and all end up in the same condition. Fucked.
Of course, I have a list of things
to do. It dances around in my head, in a long T-Shirt, to some half-forgotten
punk beat. It sticks its tongue out at me and tips me a middle finger. I try to
ignore it and do the dishes instead. I can manage that much.
As I look out at my garden now. The house
sparrows are down at the water bowl - drinking then flying up to sit on the back
fence and wipe their beaks, first one side then the other, on the edge of the
wood. Sometimes a large bird or a wayfaring cat may startle them but they never
go far away. They like my back garden, you see. They like the meadow qualities
it increasingly demonstrates. They are happy out there.
And here’s the thing.
So am I.
I really like it. I really, really
like it.
I don’t crave any pin-perfect,
hyper-organised yard. I admire my neighbour’s endless handiwork but I don’t
envy it. I like things rough, I guess. I’m that rough kind of a man. I’ll go
out in a minute and top up the water in the bowls and put out some seed. I’ll
enjoy the comings-and-goings of the day via occasional peeks through my kitchen
window (which needs a wash, tick) and it will bring me much pleasure.
I like the Wilding. Even if it’s not
the real reason that my back garden is in shit. The gentle sounds of the
creatures who live there. Wilding suits me just fine.
I just wish I could stop feeling so darned
guilty about it all.
It’s spoiling my buzz.