Rough ground looks like chenille, softly tactile, from 20 metres up. A puddle blinks back whitely, a fallen fragment of sky. I can’t absorb what I’m seeing fast enough. The land beneath me rolls away and the horizon pulls near, creating a sense of adventurous possibility. I’m used to trudging about the garden, hauling sacks of compost, dragging wheelbarrows over gravel; this, by contrast, feels like freedom.
Hoping for deeper knowledge of my garden, a hectare (2.47 acres) of former farmland on the Cheshire plain, I’ve acquired a small drone with a camera. Drones make brief, veering, playful flights, revealing the familiar from fresh angles. Mine seems more like a kite or a bird than a human with wings: it’s heedless of paths, happiest in ascent, sensitive to the breeze. When it skims the ground it glides over obstacles with grace and purpose, motors no louder than a couple of bumblebees.
Watching the footage afterwards I’m frantic, trying to read the story sketched on the ground before the film runs out. Shadows in the turf where trees used to grow: a reminder that the field was once an orchard. I never knew until now how many rabbit-paths criss-cross the land. Bleached skeins of last year’s goosegrass conceal a ditch and mark out a hedge. The hedge itself proves as wide as a bridle path, while a 200-year-old oak becomes an airy structure viewed from its shoulder, ragged and fragile rather than imposing.
The clean bare lines of spring work better than summer’s fuzzy sprawl: hot colours disappear; water glints from hidden pools and sloughs. The drone offers a desultory, wandering gaze, not a steady and possessive one. Equally, its speedy progress lets me forget my worries over scruffy flowerbeds and moss-grown lawns. When I first flew the drone I wanted to discover things within the garden I hadn’t guessed at. Now its place in the wider landscape seems far more meaningful than the fussy details of my own small plot.
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