Letters to garden makers

 Dear reader, My garden is becoming more and more untidy as the years roll on, and as my energy wanes. I feel this most acutely since retiring on a small pension and living within our means. It doesn't help that at this time of year Instagram and Book of the Face is full of really beautiful images of tulip filled and very tidy gardens. Do you sense a kind of jealousy creeping in ? Ok, I have a chip on my shoulder. But then we also read a lot about not being too tidy in the garden for the benefit of wild things. It is very hard to resist the urge to tidy. It must be a deeply entrenched human need? I've wanted to take down the rotting pergola and shed for a very long time, but every year something happens that means we can't spend on what is secondary in terms of priorities. I used the first warm dry day for some time to venture down and inspect what remains of this end of the garden, and this involved tidying and clearing up the detritus. I actually derived pleasure from thi