Monday 11 June 2012

To move or not to move, that is the question...

I would like to move house. Nothing new in that and nothing wrong with this one, it's just that it isn't really 'me'. I'm a country cottage kind of person and this is a new estate house, fine while we were four of us but we've been two for a few years now and so I'd really like to move on. Except for one issue, which to a lot of people wouldn't be a major one, but to me it's a big deal. The house itself is a 'family home'and all the families which the agents - we're on our second set now - have convinced to come through the door like the house but the garden, well that's the 'issue'. I designed this garden small though it is, for wildlife and reticent as I am to blow my own trumpet, it has been and still is rather good. The mixed native hedge is full of birds, the wild flowers are swarming with insects including many species of bumble and honey bee and the pond is alive with newts, frogs, dragonflies etc etc. And that's the problem. According to these and the former agents, a 'typical' family wants a 'typically conventional' garden, you know the sort, lawn in the middle and borders round the edge so apparently the only way I can move on to the cottage of my dreams, or as near to it as the budget will stretch and create a bigger and better wildlife garden, is to trash this one. So what do I do, weep into my cup of tea as I imagine newts suffocating and burly men lay a nice flat lawn over the carefully contrived range of habitats, or do I just accept the status quo and stay put. Maybe we just need another agent....