Back in the day the farm was a bit of a dump – in the literal sense of the word . In fact, the whole farm resembled the garden at Anderson street in Makhanda when I first bought it – just on a bigger scale. Our farm had been owned by a lawyer who lived in Kimberly and over many years, because he wasn’t about, locals had used it as a rubbish dump. Under the bluegums and wattles there was a seemingly endless quantity of broken glass, rusty wire, rubber shoe soles, old batteries, bits of plastic, glass marbles, and every kind of relic from the past. Today when we walk the dogs and admire the vines and young trees, we still scan the ground for glass, aluminium bottle-tops, and the remaining rubbish which seems to slowly surface after failed digestion by the earth. Our neighbour (his land was also used as a dump) has the theory that the moles are outraged by the trash and it is their housecleaning that brings it back into the light of day.