outdoor · north end · last swept never (by intent)
where the brick of the neighbouring wall meets the brick of the back wall, both half-eaten by ivy, the ground stays moist long after the rest of the garden has dried. a stack of three terracotta pots, smallest on top, the largest split along one side. a slow heap of last year's leaves going to good earth. a wooden fork without a tine.
a robin nested here twice in five years. a hedgehog wintered once and did not come back. a small flat stone marks where a much-loved dog is not buried — the actual grave is elsewhere, but the stone is here because the corner felt right.
a child kneels here in summer to lift the bricks and count what is under them. the keeper never sweeps this corner — that is its purpose — but turns the heap once at midsummer and once at the first frost. things forgotten in this corner become things one will never need.
field-note: the air in this corner smells of earth three weeks before the rest of the garden does, in any given spring.