day of the triffid

One of the selling-points of our new house in Newport was the little patio garden at the back. Nice and low-maintenance, no lawn-mowing required, enough room to grow a few herbs and, more importantly, enough room to fit the new gas barbecue in and leave room for a couple of chairs.

However, there were a few maintenance tasks that needed to be done. Most pressing of these was tackling the unspeakable alien Thing that lurked menacingly at the back of the garden, against the wall of the warehouse that backs onto our garden wall.

Here's Google Maps' current aerial photograph of the house, garden and warehouse:


Note the green leafy growth (it's ivy, mainly) covering the end of the warehouse roof. Some time between when the Googlecopter made its last pass over the house (summer 2007, I would guess) and when we moved in, some sort of catastrophe occurred whereby the whole shebang peeled off the wall and slumped into our garden, like this:


Fortunately my Dad is both an enthusiastic gardener and a glutton for physical punishment, so we took advantage of some unexpectedly fine weather to set to work. This is the sort of gardening I really like - none of this nonsense about being able to tell the difference between a crocus and a chrysanthemum, just red-blooded wanton destruction. After a full day's labour the monster lay slain, and all manner of wildlife was rendered unexpectedly homeless. As a bonus we discovered some quite nice plants, and also a mysterious (locked) door apparently leading into the back of the warehouse, visible in the "after" picture here:


A more comprehensive photographic record of the day can be found here. I'm off to shower the bits of bird's nest out of my hair now.