cui bono?

Tesco had chestnut stuffing, so that was all right.  The sausage meat has gone in the freezer, to be turned into a meatloaf as soon as the fuss is over.  The fruit is soaking for a stollen, and I bought a jar of mincemeat large enough to keep us in mince pies until Easter.  Plus an emergency packet of chocolate Liebnitz, and I was planning to make a batch of florentines tomorrow morning, having discovered a stash of best before the end of December flaked almonds in my box of baking supplies. It's easy to forget that Christmas only lasts a couple of days, and that there are only two of us.

The chickens came out for a run after lunch, and I cleaned their roosting board, a job that's better done when it's not windy.  I thought I might make progress weeding the herb bed next to the hen house but they had other ideas and wanted to go and stand in the back garden behind the Eleagnus hedge.  Chickens are creatures of limited but firmly fixed ideas and it was easier to go with the flow, so I went and trimmed some of the remaining whiskery bits off a box hedge that gave me a strategic view of them.

Mid-winter is not generally recommended as the time to cut box, but as Christopher Lloyd put it, the best time to do many gardening jobs is when you have time, just as the best time to take cuttings can be when somebody offers to give you some.  I started cutting the box in September but the hens didn't stay by the hedge long enough for me to finish it, and anyway it's easier on the back done in short bursts.  I have seen some very beautiful gardens created and maintained by their owners that included significant amounts of low, formal, clipped evergreens, the wonderful Herterton in Northumberland being a prime example, but in general I suspect you find it in gardens where there is paid help and that it is one of the jobs that even hands-on owners tend to delegate. Actually, I believe that part of the point of really extensive formal hedging is to signal that you are so wealthy, you can afford to pay someone to do all this, just as extensive areas of close scythed turf were before the advent of the mechanised lawnmower.

You can see the difference between professionally designed modern gardens and hobbyists' gardens if you flick through the pages of the glossy magazines.  It is not just that the designed gardens include more, higher quality and much more expensive hard landscaping than the enthusiasts' private plots.  On the whole the designed outdoor living spaces would not be nearly so much fun to look after, with a limited plant range and a heavy requirement for routine tidying in the form of sweeping, scrubbing and trimming.  Outdoor housework, in fact, which is fine if it's all going to be done by somebody else anyway.  The limited plant range may not be a bad thing in purely design terms, creating visual unity and clarity, but looking after it could feel more like work than play.

It's a question to ask yourself the next time you're looking at a designed green space.  Is it more fun for the onlooker or the gardener?