The garden fights back (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

The garden fights back

10:53am Monday 4th August 2008

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Maybe I shouldn’t really be gardening… well, pulling up nettles and brambles… in shorts, sandals and T-shirt. It’s asking for trouble.

But, you know how it is… You’re strolling near the un-dergrowth, and you pick at the odd weed, and before you know it you’re delving in, having nipped to the garden shed to get the garden gloves on, and riving and tearing at every weed-type thing you can see.

But then, the plants fight back.

There I was, on top of an old tree stump, gingerly pulling at the nettles and bramble that were creeping all over it from the farmer’s field on the other side.

I tugged at one bramble, hoping to wrench it from its moorings in the field with one forceful pull.

Unfortunately, it was having none of it, and before I knew it, it had seemed to jerk me for-wards, and in a trice I was losing my balance.

Staring at a pile of nettles and more brambles and some hidden barbed wire too, I was bracing myself for a bit of pain.

But somehow, although losing a sandal in the undergrowth, I managed to effect something of a forward roll worthy, I would venture to suggest, of an Olympic athlete, and came to rest in the field relatively unscathed.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted any neighbours to have seen my idiocy or not.

Dumb, it certainly was, but the recovery was, though I say it myself, pretty impressive!