A scratch of a de-brambling day

I often say that the garden tells me what it wants me to do.  Today was a definite example of this.  I knew I wanted to spend the day weeding the back garden and as I was drinking a mug of tea, sitting in the gardening, wondering where to start first when the answer was staring at me.

I was looking at some rather nice, green, lush, hazel leaves.  Which would have been fine but I don't want a hazel tree growing in this border.  'Right' I said decisively, frightening the cats who were wondering who I was talking to; I grabbed my secateurs, hori hori and thorn resistant gloves and set to it.  

I found another hazel tree growing happily in another border.  They seem to like growing near roses.  

I sometimes think that if I walked away from my garden it would soon become a forest (well maybe a small wood) of hazels, wild cherry trees, sycamores (so many sycamores) and hawthorn trees.  Not forgetting the odd field maple, laburnum and conker tree.  I truly love the diversity of trees that live in and around my garden, but it does sometimes feel like every seed grows.

Oh and the brambles, so many brambles.  This blog is not called the Blackberry Garden for nothing, blackberries are the most persistent weed in my garden.  They seed everywhere.  If they are quite young when I find them I can dig them out easily, they are not the issue.  Its the big b*ggers that hide at the back of the borders, or wind their way through shrubs and roses until suddenly I realise they are ten foot long.  I am not exaggerating.  They get really huge with stems a good 2 or three centimetres thick.  If I removed every one I saw in the garden (and I try to) there would still be plenty of fruiting blackberries around the garden.  They surround the garden and the lane that leads to the house.  There are enough.

And they fight back, oh my how they fight back.  I am scratched really badly after a day of fighting with them.  I had left it too long as it has been so warm I have been wearing shorts in the garden.  To fight the brambles I need thick denim jeans to help ward them off.  My short sleeves however allowed my arms to get badly and painfully scratched.  At one point I was stuck under a rose bush.  The prickles had embedded themselves through my tee-shirt and into my back and shoulders.  If I moved this way they dug in, if I moved that way they dug in and I could not reach to remove them.  In the end I moved down wards, getting really quite low and this released me.  What a relief!  My tee shirt thankfully was a gardening tee shirt which means it already had holes in it.  It now has more.

Several hours later and I am hot, dusty and dirty and happy from spending so much time in the garden.  I carefully wash all the scratches and apply antiseptic cream, I also utter a small word of thanks for the tetanus jab I had a couple of months ago. 

I know I will have missed many brambles, but I have removed a lot and this is good.  I feel like today was a day of reclaiming the garden.  It was a joy to be out there and getting on with what needed to be done.  I need more days like this.

Take care and be kind.

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