The writing's on the wall

Early on a bright and frosty February morning, John Lewis-Stempel sets about trying to repair a dry-stone wall in the hope of keeping his horse, and other livestock, away from his prized roses

- John Lewis-Stempel

NINE o’clock sharp on a cold morning and I am absorbed in geometry. Angles and planes, perpendiculars and horizontals, sines and cosines.

A year ago my horse, in his keenness to sample cultivated Rosa ‘Constance Spry’, pushed over a section of the dry-stone wall that separates the paddock from the garden. My farmer’s fix to fill the resultant gap—two posts wham-banged in, a section of stock fence and a strand of barbed wire—has successfully prevented ingress into the herbaceous border by the equids and livestock that pass through the paddock. And, small bow of professionalism, it’s one up on the sheep-farming neighbour who tied his collie in front of a ‘glat’ as he warmed himself at The Crown.

But the stock fencefiller is an eyesore. Less Gertrude Jekyll, more something to hide. Since my artful attempt to train the remains of Rosa ‘Con- stance Spry’ over the V-shaped hole in the wall has dwindled on the stem, I have resorted to proper measures: this frosty morn, I am repairing the dry-stone wall.

At the bottom of the heap, a hibernating toad: stone cold, suspended between life and death. A sentient gargoyle