Hello wall

Now here is something I haven’t seen for a few years. A beautiful (and very tall) dry stone wall.

It sits outside our stables and has been clothed in brambles for way too long.

I even found a rather well established elderlfower tree trying to take off right at the base of the wall.

As it’s so tall I did have to resort to secateurs for most of the bramble work. The strimmer sat smugly in the shade behind me,  idle and unused while I toiled away with the old technology.

Actually I did try the strimmer for the lower bits. I have a nettle forest and it was satisfying thwacking into that. But mostly it was an excercise in laceration limitation.

And the brambles won this round.

I almost didn’t want to post the After Shot of the other huge strimming job.  (But this is a warts and all record of a garden in transformation.)

The poor area looks very forlorn and bald.  That’s the curse of brambles when they get established in an area; you just can’t sow anything else to take its place.  They steal all the light and the goodness.

So by cutting back the brambles here I am left with a stark landscape of dirt.

You can barely see the wall that was here originally. So much soil has spilt out and over the edge, hiding everything.

In my idle moment yesterday, when I was panting with exhaustion from ferrying yet another load of cut brambles to the compost heap, I thought wouldn’t it be great to take all the soil off and get this area looking gorgeous again.

And then reality appeared in the form of the  list I have already prepared for this autumn in the garden.  I have a very large amount of branches to chip, 1300 bulbs to plant, a new huge area of planting to create above the courtyard, the iris bank to plant up with shrubs, yet more strimming of all the lower terraces, and possibly a vineyard to rip up.

Oh for staff. Or just 30 hours each day.

But if we finally get cool weather maybe the brambles on the bank wont lurch straight back into rampant growth and I can walk past this area and ponder my next move.