I've just spent a couple of hours clearing the garden. I know, I should have been working - but it's bound to start raining again soon. I haven't been out there working since the Autumn, and my back has locked up on me. I always used to think that gardener's lumbago was a figment of Enid Blyton's imagination. Now I am not so sure.

I once knew an old lady who lived in a bungalow that was in the centre of a huge garden. She and her husband had built their house themselves (or rather, they had hired builders to do it). They found their plot by the simple means of asking a local farmer if they could buy a bit of his field. This was back in the fifties, so he merely handed over an acre or so for a tiny wad of cash. Having been a corner of a field, a row of trees formed one border of the garden. To hear the old lady, the sole raison d'être of these lovely oaks, was to mess up her immaculate lawn. I never heard her say a nice thing about them, merely her constant grumble about having to clear up fallen leaves.

If I wasn't mad about wildlife, I might have a bit of sympathy with her after this morning's session. It suddenly dawned on me that I couldn't see any bulbs appearing, and found they were suffocating under a blanket of damp leaves. And since I'd waited until the leaves had fallen from the nearby trees and then cleared them in the autumn, I am a bit puzzled where they have all come from. Presumably a case of nature abhors a vacuum.

But despite my aching back, I didn't take a leaf out of that old lady's book and moan about them. First I found a hibernating toad, and had to replace his cover. And the birds love perching in our trees. All the time I was clearing, a robin sang to me. It was beautiful. Even Dog looked impressed. It evidently made a welcome relief from me repeatedly singing "If I were a rich man" - out of tune and those being the only words of the song I know - ever since reading about Thespian's forthcoming audition.

I dream that one day I will own a garden like that old lady's. In the meantime, I shall leave with a more appropriate song.