
As regular readers know, our house and garden, while they are in the middle of suburbia, are pleasingly isolated; when the leaves are on the trees, we cannot see any of our neighbors and they are spared having to watch our goings on. In the winter months, we find out that there are, in fact, other people out there. I was talking a while back to our nearest neighbor, an older gal ( the one who lives across the pond-at the top of the hill-through the trees), and she commented that now that the leaves were off, she could occasionally catch a glimpse of me out working in the garden. I told her she might not want to look too closely, because I was used to being by myself out there and, since it's a long way back to the house, I've been known to occasionally pee against a tree. On hearing that, she smiled and said that she might have to invest in a bigger pair of binoculars... now, I've been trying to work out if that is a compliment or not?