The back yard

Years ago now my mother decided that she no longer wanted grass in the back yard. That long strip of grass that had been the witness to endless games of tackle football was to be replaced by an English garden. I believe that an English garden is made distinct by its lack of perfection. Rather, the garden seems to flow naturally into their surroundings Unfortunately, we were people of modest means, so we were only able to put in a small pond and no wonderful Ionic columns or the like. What I remember most about digging up that grass was what relentlessly hard work it was. Though, to be fair, my sister did the yeoman's work of pulling up those seemingly endless roots.

The long and the short of it is that I spent many summer days as a teenager digging holes or hauling dirt into the backyard. You would think that such work would prepare someone when they finally got a little bit of space of their own. And yet, here I am, years later, looking at our little piece of grass and chain link fence, and I can't picture anything. In fact, the only thing that I seemed to have learned from my mother is that the grass must come out. So today I set about digging meaningless holes in our backyard and mentally filling them with plans that have not yet been purchased while the neighbor's dog growled at me fiendishly.

And as I was piling the dirt into the middle of our yard I tried to picture what an English garden might look like on our small bit of property. I couldn't. I think I need to hire an old English fellow who loves his pipe, and who speaks with a cockney accent, though infrequently, the speaking that is. I fear that if I don't at the rate that I'm going I'll have made a yard worthy of the world's finest dogs, a collection of aimless holes. Perhaps if I buried a bone in them it would make more sense.

I fear that we again won't have room for a lake or Gothic ruins. Our means are a bit more modest than all that. I've got an idea that our side yard should be comprised of bricks and lined by trees. Unfortunately, that's all I've got, an idea. I've no earthly clue how one goes about putting in those bricks or finding the right sort of plant to obscure your neighbor's house in a natural Frostian way. Anyhow, if anyone out there enjoys hard labor and has a good eye for a back yard space you're welcome to come by on a Saturday and mop your brow of sweat while S makes lemonade in the kitchen.

Some nights I dream myself out of the back yard and onto our roof, where I can sit and watch the city go dark. And above, I can watch the shapes of clouds passing in front of the moon and remember back to a time, eight years ago, when a young woman once asked me if clouds were visible at night. And I'll remember that I answered her with a laugh and how much that particular night meant to who I am now. And how distant it seems, how estranged I am from that person in the back seat of the car, who got out, and looked at the same night sky, pointing an index at the dark shapes moving through the atmosphere, shrouding the lower portion of the moon, miles away from the cement and the cold.