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The Woodies have a blog. It’s a kind of collective. Not sure we’re about to start a revolution baby, but we might kindle a small debate or two and perhaps raise a smile. Anyway, rather than just blogging corporate Woodreed by fielding our top Woodie (as so many other companies seem to do in a thinly veiled attempt at impressing with their profundity), we wanted all our individual voices to be heard. An agency’s most valuable assets are its people after all. Everyone’s got something to say here and with us everyone’s ideas and opinions matter.

Each week someone different will be blogging. It's mostly about stuff that rocks our world as well as the flipside – the things that just don't cut it with us. We'll blog about inside and outside – inside this glorious industry where we work and outside in the real world.
It's a bit of an experiment, so go with us on this one.

Hope you enjoy.

Saturday 29 January 2011

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.

3 comments:

  1. Don't suppose you fancy coming round and doing mine? Was thinking this weekend how sad everything was looking, has it been winter for ever?

    Lovely piece of writing by the way

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  2. Selective gardening memory? Funniest gardening event of w'end was Jo hitting a digit with her hammer, then cursing me and the dog (it was our fault!) and then having a mega dewdrop hanging moment! So dire but so inspiring cos she carried on even though throbbing and dripping! xx

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  3. Can't you use a petrol hedgecutter to cut them back?

    ReplyDelete