#16 The fence not the fence post

Weekend Edition

A few years ago at the start of the pandemic I spent an ungodly amount of time in my yard, also known as the first time in my adult life I spent any time in any yard. 

Prior to the pandemic and for decades I’d lived in an assortment of x-hundred square feet studios and one bedrooms in big cities with fire escapes counting for outdoor space. In the pandemic, I moved to a house I’d bought a few months before with my book advance money, a cottage-like house that sits on the northern-most point of a 2.1 acre woodland, of which a quarter has been cleared and cultivated. There are more trees than the mind can comprehend which shed many a leaf, and by March 2020 the yard had not been cleared since the year before by the previous inhabitants. There were so many leaves, there was so much time, I had a lot of ironic flannel, worker boots, a rake. It felt like a look more than a hobby or a task and then it felt like the only thing that made sense to do; a compulsion, a satisfaction, a joy.

Because…