A thorny issue

The garden was quiet again this morning once the storm had passed. There was a certain stillness - almost a sigh of relief - a moment's breath. The birds were flitting back and forth, making up for lost time I suspect. Today we'd planned to do the Big Garden Bird Watch ,  something we've tried to do annually for quite a while now. However, instead of sitting down in the summerhouse, notebook and mug of tea to hand, we were having to wrestle a 20 year old climbing rose who'd succumbed to Éowyn's howling winds and was now lying prone across the back of the garden in a very sorry state.

Himself and I armed with not mugs of tea or binoculars but with loppers, secateurs and the shredder got to work soon after breakfast. Metres and metres of heavily thorned and tangled rose branches were first lopped then shredded into piles of chippings. As we worked, the woodshed began to reappear from behind the unforgiving tangle.

To be brutally honest, I was not sorry the rose had to be reduced to a pile of wood chip. It had grown so big that the flowers - as beautiful and as scented as they were - were beyond our reach. We estimated it had grown over 12 metres (40 foot in old money) and was truly a monster. Now, hopefully it will recover and flower again in a year or two but at head height.

Did we still manage to see a bird or two? Well, surprisingly so - yes, many. They were so busy being birds that our shenanigans with the rose did not seem to bother them.