I’ve always preferred houses with a bit of character, and looked with horror on the estates of cookie-cutter housing that sprung up in the ’70s. They used to look like LEGO houses to me. (Though I notice the LEGO minifigs are comfortably-off these days.)

What with the country being full and all, not everyone can live in a place with spires and multiple staircases and a greenhouse on the roof. So I live in a house pretty much exactly like 80% of my neighborhood, which was designed just short of my standards (e.g. there is no natural light or ventilation to the bathroom).

My idea of a garden is similar: a garden should be thorny and green, full of spiders and butterflies and hidden corners and brambles and berries, and in the summer should be full of floating seeds and scent, and in the autumn it should smell all wet and rotten. It should be a place where fairies live, not the pink flowery sort, but the hard-as-nails sort who have to scratch out a living in the woody undergrowth.

Since I have this bathroom to fix, and since it’s a bit hard (i.e. we don’t know how we are going to get clean while the facilities are all ripped out) I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden.

I’ve been going completely against this direction, looking after the lawn in the prescribed manner, digging in poo and sand to improve the soil, and buying interesting things from garden centres to put in.  I’ve even straightened the edges of the lawn to line up with the paths.

It’s the sort of garden that I should despise, but I’m loving it more and more! A LEGO garden to match my LEGO house.

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