I am a terrible gardener, for many, many reasons, not least that I hate digging up healthy plants. So again and again I allow a few fast-growers to take over. This is particularly unfortunate with trees, as we live in a conservation area, and once they reach a certain size, I am not allowed to remove them. Reprieving that beech seedling was a terrible mistake – half the garden is now in deepest shade. And the oaks were probably not too sensible either. Add in the sycamores growing down from the railway embankment and it won’t be long until my long cherished, never achieved, idyllic image of a fantasy wooded garden will have to come to terms with the reality of an inappropriately sited small patch of proper, honest-to-goodness woodland. I wonder which will be the first to succumb – the garage? the tool shed? the house itself? Such foolishness – I must get out there and do something about it.

But there is a wren in the yew tree, and blue tits and long-tailed tits play tag across several gardens. I’ve seen a tawny owl sitting in the tallest trees on the embankment and parakeets pause there occasionally to rest. Robins appear when I do anything at all to turn over the leaves and there are blackbirds as well as the inevitable magpies and pigeons.

The squirrels may dig up my bulbs and drive the dog wild, but they are also planting future trees. And the fox cubs chase one another behind the fence – almost always just out of sight. The frogs would probably be happy whatever the pond’s surroundings, but spend a lot of time on the edge of the water, hiding in the deep shade under the leaves.

So what to do? Cut back, order and plant brightly coloured bedding? Or give in gracefully to the patchwork of green?

I think I’d better take a book outside and think about it for a while….

Taking down the Christmas decorations tonight, wrapping the stars and angels, I’m repacking our family memory box. The plain coloured glass baubles, with their worn patches and wobbly tops, hung on my parents’ tree: even their tissue paper, yellowed and increasingly frail, found its way to the London suburbs from deepest Cornwall. There are fewer crystal icicles than there were before my daughter and her best friend sledged down the stairs on their stomachs and took the tree with them – a terrifying crash, followed by absolute silence and two pairs of horrified eyes looking at the wreckage. I was just grateful that there were no broken bones. The little nativity scene on the hall window-sill came home with us from a wonderful Spanish holiday with a family who have been friends since before any of our children were born. The unlikely painted glass hippie camper van came from Woodstock: a holiday of highs and lows, before our son’s Aspergers diagnosis. The tiny felt mouse in a walnut shell came from a local fete, and has survived longer than much grander ornaments. Other individual bits and pieces come with memories of galleries, museums and heritage sites across the UK, from family visits and work-related trips.

And then there are the general house decorations: the red tape cut to length to wind around the stair rails and hold the non-breakable bells and baubles; the tinsel-wrapped wreath which is just the right size to tie to the door knocker; the bits and pieces from crackers and table decorations that sit on the mantelpieces and the rather roughly modelled golden angel which ‘flies’ from the top banisters above the hallway. And, of course, there are the papier mache reindeer (also gold – there’s a theme emerging) whose antlers need more and more sellotape every year, and which stand on top of the bathroom boiler cupboard when not called upon to guard the Christmas tree.

There are other elements to the traditional packing up process: the discovery of a bag of small gifts, for stockings or the tree, bought well in advance and completely lost until just a little too late. The crackers which we never do remember to put out when the little ones of the extended family arrive. And the final dismantling of the impossible puzzle with which we all claim to have helped, but which in practice has been almost entirely the work of our daughter.

Writers for glossy magazine would undoubtedly be horrified by the lack of a single colour scheme and the battered edges. I couldn’t be happier with our Christmas-as-history.