A little borrowed soil.......

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This is a view of the gardens in our street. It's a long row of houses which were built for local coalminers in the 1880s. There was no pebble-dashing then.... or conservatories, just modest little brick houses with the barest of amenities. At the bottom of the gardens, where the Poplar trees are, was the railway line which ran from Bishop Auckland to Durham. The railway line closed in the 1960s and is now a footpath and cycle route, and is very popular.

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This is the same view when there was a beautiful hoar frost (and an ugly satelite dish!).

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Here is our little borrowed patch of land. I say 'borrowed' because it is never truly ours. In fact I find it comforting to think of all the people who enjoyed (or possibly didn't) this garden for the last 130 years and will continue to do so for however long the house remains standing. It gives a sense of continuity.

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..... and here we are amongst the greenery, the garden transformed from the skeletal beauty of Winter. The lush growth of the plants and trees block most of the outside view and, for a while, our lives seem to run parallel with the non-human creatures that live here too. We are contained together in privacy and peace in 'our' shared territory.

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Here's the 'Multi-species Diner'. Everything that grows here feeds birds and insects..... and we even get some of it too. We don't mind sharing the crops with other creatures; we all live in this little borrowed patch of land and it makes us very happy.