The garden was chock-full of weeds. I need someone to help me plant potatoes and weed the onions. I walked the garden path to the sheds at the bottom. He was pulling dead roots from the dusty earth. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees. He stumbled over a molehill. Clouds of birds rose from the tree-tops. Some of the sheds were clearly in bad repair. Recently he had caught himself brooding about the meaning of life: man's life is nasty, brutish and short; there is no other mammal of comparably indiscriminate ferocity. He used the garden shed as a bolt hole for when the children got too noisy. They were picking up light brush and small fallen branches for firewood. He coiled up the garden hose. I picked up the shears and began to clack them menacingly in mid-air. The sun had killed most of the plants; it doesn't look as if any carrots are going to come up this year.