Pruning life and work

Carlisle Castle Keep

Spent yesterday pruning cotoneasters that have shot up this year and are scratching the new paintwork on the garage. Everything has grown as if there's no tomorrow this summer. Must be all the rain, and I suppose it hasn't been cold. I hate chopping things down, but in a relatively small garden there comes a point when the plants take over the neighbours' gardens, destroy the fabric of our buildings, or they come down. It's just as well we did, for we found loads of alder shoots and, left untended, they would grow into sixty foot trees.

We'd already had to disentangle a clematis that had joined forces with some unknown shrub across the back fence - together they were on a take-over bid on the apple tree and the neighbours's shed. Next we'll have to fight our way in among the brambles and hack them back. The crop we got from them wasn't very good this season, and our little apple tree produced not one fruit. It has been a bad year for fruit, so I expect the prices will go up accordingly soon.
When we took the pathetic branches to the Household Waste re-cycing plant (commonly known as The Tip), everyone else had been doing the same thing. The skips were full of discarded and uprooted greenery, some still with brave little flowers showing their faces to the sun. Made me wonder if someone will come down from on high and prune us one day. Also made a good analogy for editing a work in progress. Get rid of the rampant greenery, and leave the beautiful flowers. Ha! The trick, obviously, is in recognising the difference between the two!