When we first came here I was hobbling around on crutches fresh from surgery for a broken ankle, so I wasn’t too thrilled to find the woods filled with hidden trip hazards in the form of layers of ground ivy vines and another invasive form of vegetative tree snake looking creature that had squeezed the life out of an innocent clump of cedars and was making its way skyward spiralling up a handy poplar tree.

Now that it’s spring, I’m remembering rambling about in Ireland this time of year in pre covid days and being entranced with the garden structures made from similar vines and willows. Irish and English gardeners take weaving nature’s bounty to an art form. I needed a compost bin and lumber is expensive, so what began as a salvaged section of a crate with a slat bottom is evolving with the addition of alder sticks available in any roadside ditch and those very bendy useful vines I had looked askance at, into a quite serviceable woven compost bin. Basically I’m making it up as I go along, which is half the fun of it.