At the weekend I made several hundred holes in my lawn. So far, not one of them has done anything at all. That is exactly how it is supposed to work, and I have been thinking about it ever since.

"The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain."

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(6 min read)

Hello friends, Gary Stewart here.

By the end of the weekend the lawn looked as though a flock of small, determined birds had been through it in rows. Plugs of soil lay everywhere, each about the length of a finger, grey-brown and slightly greasy on the cut side, the way only clay ever is. Hundreds of them. Behind each one was a neat round hole going straight down into the dark.

I would like to tell you I did it because I am the sort of gardener who stays on top of things. I did it because on Thursday I wrote that you should, and it seemed poor form to be the only person who didn't. For the record, the greenhouse glass is still filthy and the sweet peas are still in their packet. One out of three. I mentioned self-discipline on Thursday as the value I was least sure I would pass, and the weekend has done nothing to change my mind.

But the lawn is done, all of it, and I am quietly pleased about that.

It was not even work. Some of the grass took the tines like a cake takes a skewer, a clean push and a soft little pop as the core came free. Other patches were closer to trying to get into a patio. Those were the parts that carry the most traffic: the way to the shed, the bits the children run across, the stretch I walk over without thinking a dozen times a day. On those, every single hole was an argument.

When the last row was done I went back over the whole lot with a bag of sharp sand and a stiff brush, working it across the grass until every hole had a pale little plug of its own. Then I stood up, felt my back tell me about it, and looked at what I had done. I realised it had achieved, for the moment, precisely nothing.

What the holes are for

It is worth knowing what clay does across a summer, because it explains why those patches fought back.

Clay is made of extraordinarily fine particles, flat and plate-shaped, far smaller than grains of sand. When the ground is left alone they sit loosely, with tiny gaps between them for air and water. Put weight on them, week after week, and those plates are pressed down flat on top of one another like a stack of wet paper. Then a dry summer bakes the stack hard. What you are left with is a surface that rain cannot get into. It sits on top in puddles, or runs off to somewhere lower, and the grass roots underneath go short of both water and air.

A hollow tine fixes that by taking soil out rather than shoving it aside. Each core removed leaves an open channel, and that channel is a way in: for rain, for air, and eventually for roots, which will follow a route down if they are given one.

The sand keeps that channel from slumping shut over winter, so it stays a drain rather than becoming a dent. But even a sanded hole in dry ground is just a hole. The good it does depends entirely on something arriving to come through it.

Today was close to twenty-two degrees in King's Lynn, shirt sleeves in October, and the lawn sat under it with hundreds of sand-filled channels, dry and waiting. The forecast says rain on Wednesday, and a drop of eight or nine degrees behind it, with nights near eight. That is when the work I did at the weekend starts doing anything. Not before.

The work you do in the dry

I have been turning that over since Sunday, and like most things out there it will not stay on the lawn.

I could not have done this job in the rain. Aerating wet clay is close to pointless: the tines smear the sides of each hole shut as they go in, and you compact the ground around them with your own boots. It had to be done in the dry. And yet the dry is not what it is for. The whole point of the work is the wet.

We cannot make rain. We can only make the holes.

I think a great deal of what matters in a life works the same way. The good things that come, help when we need it, a change of season, another person finally being ready to talk, arrive on their own timetable, and no amount of effort brings them a day sooner. What we do get to decide is whether there is anywhere for them to go when they come. That decision is nearly always made in the fair weather, when nothing seems urgent and the ground is easy to get into, which is precisely when it is easiest not to bother.

On Thursday Chloe, Olivia and I walked round a high school. Olivia starts there, or somewhere very like it, next September. She has one more year at primary school, and it occurred to me, standing on the lawn with sore hands, that this is her warm week before the weather turns. A good year, with the change already in the forecast.

I am not sure yet what making room looks like in that case. Fewer of my plans for her, probably, and more space for hers. More of the conversations that only happen in the car. I am still working it out, and I am in no hurry to pretend otherwise.

There is a quiet sadness in a warm October day, and I am not going to tidy it away. Every one of them feels slightly borrowed, handed back to you with the understanding that it is the last. You cannot hold onto it. What you can do with it is get ready for what comes next.

Before Wednesday

Practical, and short, because the window is only a couple of days.

If you aerated, fill the holes. This is the one job from the weekend I am proud of finishing properly. An open hole in clay will slump closed over winter, but one with sand in it stays open. Brush sharp sand or a sandy top dressing across the lawn and into the holes before the rain comes and turns the surface to paste. It is the difference between a hole and a drain.

Move the thing you keep meaning to move. The soil is still warm from the summer and the rain is coming to settle it in for you, free of charge. A grass in the wrong place, a shrub that has outgrown its corner: this week is about as good as it gets on clay for lifting something and putting it somewhere better.

Do your dry jobs now. Anything that needs a dry day, from cleaning glass to washing and stacking pots, belongs in the next forty-eight hours. Mine is the greenhouse, which you already know about. I am writing this one down mostly for myself.

Then stay off it. Once the rain arrives, keep your feet off wet clay wherever you can. Every time you stand on it sodden, you press those plates flat again and undo some of what you made room for. A plank laid down at the allotment, or a firm path through the borders, saves a lot of spring work.

The rain will come on Wednesday whether I am ready or not. This year, for once, the ground will be ready to drink.

You Cannot Make Rain. You Can Make the Holes. The lawn I worked on at the weekend is no better tonight than it was on Friday, and it will not be until Wednesday. Most of what we prepare for arrives on its own timetable. Our part is making sure there is somewhere for it to go.

The Hard Patches Are Where the Traffic Was. The ground that fought me was the ground I walk across every day without thinking. The parts of a life that carry the most weight are often the ones most in need of opening up, and the last we think to check.

A Warm Week Is for Making Room. Fair weather does not last, and it is not meant to. Spend it getting the ground ready, then let the rain come. When it does, everything you opened will drink.

Gary Stewart writes every week from a small garden on Norfolk clay.

No expertise, no ideal garden, just what the soil taught him that week.

Written slowly, at the speed of the garden, for people who read every word.