It all started in August when I attacked the brambles, bindweed and a mysterious spreading scoundrel of a plant.

I battled with it all, armed first with a pair of secateurs and some very thin gardening gloves. After two days of cutting everything right back to ground level, shaded from the sun by my diminishing 6 foot tangle and regularly stopping to pick thorns out of my hands, see if I really WAS sitting on that slug or drink gallons of tea and squash, I was about ready to start on the digging.

I had purchased my shiny new tools (an unknowing gift from my grandparents – thank you!) earlier in the week. Within seconds I bent the forks prongs on the unyielding root system of a variegated fuscia (about the only flowering plant I can identify). Happily it was worth it, I managed to save the rather ancient specimen and it's now showing some life after a long period of shock at the removal of most of its leaves and roots within two days. Really tough cookie that one!

I also managed to rescue some light-starved strawberries and another unidentified plant with luscious green leaves. I expect if would have flowered if I hadn't been so thorough in my scouring of the patch! Hopefully next year will bring a lovely surprise!

So finally to the digging – another day and a half of backbreaking work in the scorching August sun. This time wearing a pair of steel toe-capped boots to ensure I didn't cut off my own toes in my exuberance! With a little help from Alex (who before had professed a complete lack of interest in anything garden related), on the tougher ones, we got through it all. The worst were the mature brambles (although I still can't be sure they weren't raspberries – can anyone enlighten me as to how to tell these apart?), and the endless strings of bulbs from a kind of ornamental grass with fire-orange flowers that grows so well round here.

Of course, within the week everything was coming through to search out a new and exciting life in this glorious new world of opportunity – I caved – they all got sprayed with glyphosate. Fat lot of good it did!

Alex has adopted one end of the patch and is waging a personal, and highly successful war against the impressively resilient “mysterious spreading scoundrel” - it seems to be able to resuscitate from about an inch of root and he takes great delight in each and every fragment he finds!

Elsewhere on the patch, I lack the tenacity required for keeping on top of the weeds. Hopefully my “leave it until there's a proper job to do” strategy won't come back to haunt me in the spring.

I'll let you know!