Refuse and Treasure by Penny Anne Windsor

let me describe my garden - it is unusual - to reach it there is a narrow passage between the kitchen and the high retaining wall just wide enough for an average person then a latched gate leading to my neighbour's yard - they have barbecues in summer - an old ice-box is built into the wall - a flight of perpendicular steps leads to an area of strimmer-neat lawn and nappies swinging on a washing tree cross this this is my garden out of this I have dug broken panes of glass the parts of stolen cars bits of neighbours' extensions thrown over the privet out of this I have dug a crooked ring a soapstone egg cup a silver pot below the refuse and the treasure is my house built for copper mine workers -- fifty pound a year on the old leases -- there used to be green houses out the hack with the''tai-bachs'`before the bathrooms were built and pigs now I have created seven beds in which to cultivate daisy and clover, pansies, snowflowers, wa11-flowers, forget-me-not a multitude of lettuces and strawberries and where the bricks were dumped I let the toadflax have its way and the honeysuckle wild I go to the high garden frequently creeping along the alleyway past the old ice-box and the hinged gate and when everybody else is out -- an unusually hot Saturday afternoon with the wind blowing from the moor at the back whisking down the valley from the Brecons I clip away at the high seeding grass sycamore, nettles, brambles, bindweed and privet these are weeds, these are not too many, too few give these a chance these will survive whatever you do the wind gusts from the moor and through the sycamore lifting my purple skirt the plants I have decided upon beam in the shadows the heap I have designated weeds rot and re-root the wind seeps up my skirt -- only the grass is neatly clipped ó how do I get back through the alleyway past the high retaining wall wide enough for an average person?

Penny Anne Windsor The site of the author's garden is high on Kilvey Hill.on the East Side of Swansea. In two little lanes, Taplow Terrace and Rifleman's Row, were several almost derelict cottages once occupied by copper workers from the factories below. ("tai-bachs" literally little houses or toilets)

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