A piece of Dickens

"Some London houses have a melancholy little plot of ground behind them, usually fenced in by four high whitewashed walls, and frowned upon by stacks of chimneys, in which there withers on, from year to year, a crippled tree, that makes a show of putting forth a few leaves late in autumn, when other trees shed theirs, and, drooping in the effort, lingers on , all cracked and smoke-dried, till the following season, when it repeats the same process, and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrows to chirrup in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards "gardens"; it is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original brickfield. No man thinks of walking in this desolate place, or of turning it to any account. A few hampers, half a dozen broken bottles, and such like rubbish, may be thrown there, when the tenant first moves in, but nothing more; and there they remain until he goes away again, the damp straw taking just as long to moulder as it thinks proper, and mingling with the scanty box, and stunted everbrowns, and broken flower pots, that are scattered mournfully about --a prey to "blacks" and dirt.

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Charles Dickens - From Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby