t’s your new house. You’re standing on the footpath looking at it. It’s like, mega! The old house was the size of a caravan compared to this. So your parents have worked their butts off for twenty years just to pay the deposit! So the bank owns the whole place except the front doorstep and a bit of the carpet! That’s cool. That’s why you chose your parents in the first place: so they can give you everything you’ve ever wanted.

You walk to the front door. The drive’s so long it takes you ten minutes, but you finally get there. You step onto the verandah. Hmm. You nearly stepped through the verandah. The floor’s got more holes than a tennis net. Seems like this house might need a bit of work. You just hope you won’t be the one who has to do it.

You take a look to the right and a look to the left. In both directions you see new houses. Lots of bricks. Grey bricks, pink bricks, red bricks, brown bricks. Neat lawns. TV aerials. Nice little trees. You take a look back at your house and sigh. Old faded timber, broken windows, ivy growing up the walls: three storeys of decay. You take a look at the garden. Blackberries, weeds, a dozen dead trees, and grass as high as your nostrils.

You have to be honest. It is a bit of a mess.

But, no doubt about it, it’ll be exciting exploring this new place. You just don’t know where to start. You stand there trying to decide. The house looks interesting, but so does the garden, with its wilderness of plants. It’s hard to know which one you should go for first. Should you check out the garden, or go back inside and investigate the house?