Even the dire can inspire

I like gardening. I like it very much. But at this time of year when it's raw and bitingly cold it's hard to find anything particularly appealing about spending time outside. Plants are flattened from the snow, the so-called 'prairie planting' we were all encouraged to take up due to global warming doesn't seem to like weeks of sub-zero temperatures covered by snow. There are big gaps everywhere where I'm sure there used to be plants.

And yet underneath the slimy rotten leaf mould are the tiniest beginnings of new growth and green tips of daffodils poking through the surface. And in just 8 short weeks the garden will have burst back to life and be a blaze of bright yellows, purples and greens under a snowy canopy of cherry blossom.

But for now I have to brace myself to go out and do all the boring, unpleasant 'must do' jobs which underpin that glorious future. Like cutting back the brambles which grow through from the hedge on the other side of the fence. So sharp, no matter how many layers of clothes I'm wearing they still manage to poke through with their hideous spikes; so springy they bounce back and scratch me in the face. And worst of all they can never, ever, be beaten, they just have to be contained. If only I'd kept on top of those brambles last year they wouldn't have managed to grow to labyrinthian proportions and tangled themselves so firmly everywhere. Yet even in the face of this most miserable of jobs there's something strangely therapeutic and satisfying as you cut and then begin to pull, and pull and pull and slowly the bramble begins to come loose - it just keeps on coming until a staggering 20' of lethal thorns later it's out. Repeat that a few more times and you can actually see the original plant again.

So the moral of this story? Sometimes you have to do the things that are dire to achieve the things that inspire.