The idea is to create a small lawn, or soft grass area for handstands, picnics or just lying on to stare at the sky. Last year it was all vegetables and fruit – that is after all the point of this garden. A food forest. This year I’m more open-minded. People live in this garden and love it. It must do everything – although football is confined to the park.

Earlier in the year I allocated a space for the grass area – it’s not really going to be a lawn, more a meadow, though it’s too small to reasonably be called that. My plan was to allow it to develop itself. Plants would grow, I would snip them with shears and the grasses would survive and it would become. It didn’t quite work. It became buttercups and bare earth and quite uninviting to the gymnast or daydreamer.

So a few days ago I ordered some grass seed. A meadow mixture promising short soft grasses. The seed arrived today. Again a first idea was superseded. Throw the seed over the whole area and up it will come. But second thoughts suggested that the buttercups would still predominate. I do like buttercups but they are best in bigger meadows. Here I want soft grass. The area is small, two or three square metres. More care was needed. On hands and knees I removed the buttercups. They will make good compost – everything makes good compost – and then I raked the area, now largely bare earth, and I was almost ready to sow the seed. The soil was rather dusty and dry so I watered the whole area thoroughly and left it for a couple of hours. I have a new book – I could not write today without mentioning it, The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing. I read for an hour or two. The book is a delight, just spellbinding.

I returned to the patch of earth, the place of imagined softness. I raked it over gently and then I mixed the seed with sand to bulk it up and make spreading it easier, and I cast it down. I suspect the sparrows were watching!

Now I wait impatiently.