Everyone has a book in them

-- or at any rate, a blog. Even I do, though I only realised it this afternoon.

I passed an abandoned terrace house today, on my way home from work. After the manner of terraces, the back yard was about three metres wide, with a tall stringybark on the far side. A Hill's weeping fig had pushed down the side fence, and there was deep leaf-litter on the ground, a rainforest in miniature. Common jasmine ramped over everything, and as it is jasmine season in Sydney, you could smell it a block away. The front fence, too, had a wave of jasmine breaking over it. The terrace was white, a respectable terrace house, not tricked out in heritage colours. The dunny door was Brunswick green, but the shrubs stretching in front of it told any passer-by that the house must be derelict, as indeed did the deep jasmine across the front gate. The house is not too dilapidated yet, so it is a restful picture of green and white, not a depressing one. Why are tended gardens so much less interesting?

Thus I discovered that I wanted to write about gardening, and here I am, with a sprig of jasmine on a rainy afternoon.