In an english country garden

It's exactly the kind of English summer that encourages stuff to grow - warm and wet. It's just unfortunate that the stuff that grows in my garden is mostly the stuff I don't want.

Eight years ago it was a somewhat neglected field, and nature has never ceased her efforts to return it to that state. So I have spent the morning in the front garden rooting out dandelions, docks, thistles, goose grass, rosebay willowherb and all kinds of low creeping flowering weeds. I have long since concluded that the ground elder creeping under the fence from next door would survive a nuclear strike, along with the bamboo that the nursery swore blind was not the invasive type. An industrial-scale flame-thrower might do the trick, but I suspect the collateral damage — including the awkward conversation with the local police — would outweigh the gain.

Of course, what really irritates me, as I grub around on hands and knees with my backside fetchingly in the air, is that not once in seven years have I seen any of my neighbours — the ones with immaculate gardens that they open to the public once a year for the benefit of the church roof fund — actually doing anything that vaguely resembles hard work that will get their fingernails dirty. Do they really sneak out in the dead of night to weed by torchlight?