Through the hedge backwards!

When we bought this house 4 years ago one of the things we liked about it was the fact that on one boundary of the triangular garden was woodland.  There was a post and rail fence with rosa rugosa bushes along it and in the spring hundreds of primroses bloom on our side of the fence.  This side of our triangle is probably about 100 feet in length and the part you can see in this photo is about 40 feet of it as it continues alongside the house and down the side of our driveway too.

In previous years we have been able to get through the fence and behind the roses to trim them back as needed but this year although the tomatoes have blight, the French beans are looking decidedly poorly and sparse and the cucumbers are refusing to grow in the chilly wet weather which has been this year's summer the nettles and brambles on the other side of the fence along with the roses have gone mad!  Look at those nettles in the above photo they are about 10 feet tall.

The roses have completely taken over the fence and are tumbling down the bank towards the drive.

It's a total jungle out there this year and I said to Mr Marigold that if we didn't do something soon people would begin to say "I wonder whatever happened to that funny old couple who used to live in the house by the wood - haven't seen them for a while" and we would just disappear under the overgrowth!  I don't think it is the right time to prune the roses but I don't think we can be picky here!

Mr Marigold is not well just now - he has shingles poor lad and is feeling very sorry for himself and spending quite a lot of time having a lie down (not unnaturally) so I thought maybe it was up to me to do something about the boundary before the brambles completely took over our garden.  I peered over the fence in the bottom corner of the garden and thought "No way can I do that" - swiftly followed by "Every journey starts with a single step and if you don't try you'll never know what you can do"

 So on Tuesday morning I managed to clear a gap big enough to climb through the fence and made a start on trying to clear a narrow path behind our fence.  After lunch I had arranged to go into town to meet a couple of friends for a coffee and a chat so I dusted myself down and changed my clothes and walked into town - it was a lovely sunny day here - I came back on the bus and after making Mr Marigold a nice cup of tea I changed back into my old clothes and donned my thick leather gloves and clambered back into the wood to continue.  It was pouring with rain yesterday and I thought that rain would stop play and it would be indoor games but the sun came through in the afternoon and I was able to do a bit more and today I have again been at it.  I feel like some intrepid adventurer back here - pity I don't have a machete!

One advantage of clearing a pathway is that now I can actually pick the blackberries which I couldn't reach before and tonight we had blackberries and apple for our pudding.  So far I have done about a quarter of the length and I am hopeful that if I do a bit each day I will actually get to the other end before the beginning has become all over grown again!!  And when Mr Marigold is better he can help me to keep it clear so we don't have to do this again in the future!

After a shaky start our sweet peas are going like the clappers - probably in competition with the brambles - and I am picking a bunch every other day to have on our table.

Another of Summer's pleasures along with sitting in the sun with a cup of tea and a good book is to bury my nose in a bunch of just picked sweet peas each bloom reminding me of ladies in delicate swirling tea dresses and their fragrance is so delightful it makes all the scrambling in the wood getting scratched and stung fade away and I am in heaven for a moment at least!

Thanks to everyone who left comments on my previous post - I do hope that if you read the Snow Child you will enjoy it - you might also like to know that the author has a blog called Letters from Alaska which you might enjoy reading too if you like the book.

By the way can anyone tell me how I can stop following a blog - I sometimes come upon a blog via another blog and want to look at it for a while but then can't figure out how to stop!!