I saw you, I saw you

At last the wind has dropped, the fog and frost cleared and the temperature risen slightly. So I decided to take the opportunity to hack my way into what I optimistically call the front garden. The way brambles had started to catch at my legs every time I approached the front door had begun to annoy me, so out came the garden fork and the single perished Marigold (I hoped for gardening gloves for Christmas but Santa forgot them) and started the assault.

It went fairly well, really. I’ve removed most of the brambles, pruned the roses, dug out some of the ancient valerian that was threatening to undermine the foundations and made a teeny dent on the amount of ground elder roots that are trying to replace the soil. After a while Ned came out to help by pruning back the dead wood on a winter-flowering viburnum we moved last spring. I’d thought we’d killed it completely, but this winter a few buds appeared on a branch, and these have opened into scented blossoms. So hurrah! Not quite dead then! Ned set to work with secateurs and pruning saw, carefully scratching the bark of each branch before he cut to make sure he only took out the dead wood. It all went swimmingly with the dead branches being tracked down and removed at ground level. As he was tidying up the prunings I noticed something odd about one branch he’d taken out. It was the one with the flowers.