Pondlife

Where once sat a shallow, murky and slimy pond, which on the occasion of our housewarming party famously - and briefly - contained one of our more inebriated visitors, there is now nothing but soil. All trace of the outlandish seating area has been erased. Except from memory.

It took three separate attempts over three days to dig up the bamboo, which had no doubt started life as a single clump but which over the years infiltrated every inch of the pond's periphery and from there spread its spiny tendrils over almost a quarter of the garden. Deep and tenacious it often felt as though I was pulling my guts out rather than bamboo roots, and at one point I layed my palm open on a particularly spiky bit, which turned the air blue with a long and heartfelt string of creative expletives before I remembered that our neighbours' children were playing only a few yards away.

Finally, we have a permanent resting place for the Pieris which followed us in its pot from New Barns. Being an Ali-Baba-shaped pot, I had eventually to abandon any attempt to extract the Pieris and its root ball with the pot intact. Six years proved plenty long enough for it to wedge itself under the rim, requiring a firm application of a rubber mallet to smash the pot, revealing a predictably pot-shaped root structure, most of which had to be broken apart before planting.

It now sits very prettily beside the (previously pond-bordering) acer and has a few months' grace before it will be ruthlessly cut back in the manner I learned from my mother at the age of about six. We're now ready to hedge up the top half of the garden before planting any more colour in the border, but that will have to wait until we've scoured the entire Internet for a good deal.