Ode to a Hedge

I splash something down on paper, only to realise quite how boring it might be to anyone other than myself. Anyone living in a family of three girls learns that you are only ever an anecdote from the ‘eye-roll’.

On this occasion I am determined to be self-indulgent. Our clients need to know what they pay for (because it certainly isn’t holidays in Spain), and with whom they entrust their instruments.

Seven years ago, Sarah was a fairy-godmother to a local gardener who was being treated badly. She helped him extract himself from a bad business relationship and retrieved money owed to him. She did it because it was the right thing to do and the gardener needed help.

From that point on, twice a year J comes to our house, with his mother and a van full of tools and they garden. Six years ago they planted a line of 200 trees (white thorn, black thorn, dog roses) so this year it was time to turn the trees into a hedge. Once that was finished, and once Sarah had driven J to the hospital for a chainsaw wound, the mother and son team planted 300 more trees to continue the hedge around our house.

As a 14 year old I would go to sleep thinking of Madonna. At 27 I was thinking of Sarah; for the last three days I have been going to bed dreaming of the birds that are going to live in our hedge.

I have read a terrific book called Rebirding. It is one of those books that are only readable if you skip the first seven chapters that tell you how doomed we are and that everything is only two examples away from extinction. I fell in love with the idea of building a hazel maze, which is like Tower Hamlets for many birds and the dormouse until I realised that our drive was already a hazel maze. Nevertheless, despite my uselessness with the trowel of knowledge, I am becoming more and more of a re-wilder. Every tree we plant has bird-life in mind.

Please bear with me on this supreme self-indulgence. I feel the way I did when I first met my wife. Telling everybody about the only thing that seemed to matter. They had my sympathy then, and you have mine now.

Reality hits on a Monday morning. Sarah and I are at the airport about to start another round of gathering for our March auction. It is lucky I can dream of the birdlife flocking to the hedges, because we won’t see them for a few days yet.