1994: We move in to our house, a 1950s weatherboard in Melbourne's inner west. The back yard is small, and paved with grey cement bricks. There's a shed with a dented roller-door. A Hills Hoist. A patch of grass. A medium-sized gum tree. A straggly geranium. A palm tree, one metre high.
An old Greek guy is one of our neighbours. He has two hobbies: playing the bouzouki, and reporting cars for parking infringements. We're told he's a well-known musician around the local Greek clubs. We don't see much of him, but sometimes we hear plunka-plunka-plunk from the other side of the fence.
We're not very good gardeners. We plant pittosporum trees, but half of them die. We plant a passionfruit vine that never fruits, but then we can't get rid of it. I take up the grey cement bricks and replace them with pink and yellow pavers.
Sometimes I sneak a peek over the fence into the neighbour's yard. He's got loads of fruit trees. Pears, figs, lemons, olives. Rosellas scream and fight in them in summer.
1998: We have two babies. They learn to walk and ride their trikes on the grey bricks. Alicia falls and cuts her chin on the back step, requiring two stitches. I build them a cubby house. The palm tree is two metres high.
2000: I invite a mate over and together we pull down the old shed built by a previous owner. It has a crazy, irregular frame, with studs and joists at peculiar angles, and wiring out of an electrician's nightmare. I hire a jackhammer from Bunnings and smash up the cement floor, chucking the bits into a skip. Our daughters ride their bikes in circles around the newly spacious yard.
The geranium is still there. Even in years of drought and water restrictions, it lives on amid the devastation.
2002: On a night of storms, the gum tree splits and falls, destroying the cubby house and smashing the roof tiles over our bedroom. At 3am, orange-suited SES men and women climb onto our roof with chainsaws, trimming off the branches before lowering the trunk to the ground.
Our neighbour emerges in a dressing gown, waving his arms.
'Don't damage my lemon tree!'
'We're not going to damage your lemon tree.'
'Don't damage my lemon tree!'
We plant a new gum tree.
2006: Gradually we take control of the yard. We plant vegies and a lemon tree of our own, banksias and grevilleas. Sometimes