Time passes

When I bought my house this was a bare little ditch running along the edge of a left over piece of what, a few months previously, had been an onion field and had become our street. I used to walk here when my dog Dylan was a puppy, now I hobble over on crutches with my lame old dog Jake. In the time it's taken for this woodland to seed itself and grow to maturity I've lived through Dylan's life and into the old age of his successor, through a marriage, the childhood and adolescence of my daughter, a career and what seems like a lifetime of illness - yet it all seems like ten minutes. Coming here is a bit like Dorian Grey visiting his portrait in the attic.