Fun with ticks, thorns, spikes and scratches!

WHEN you live in the middle of wood you can expect to encounter a few things with teeth.

My nine-year-old and his friends bring home reports of a fox that jumps out of the bushes and growls at them and on one occasion even chased them up a tree.

I’ve tried to explain the foxes around here are much shyer creatures than their city cousins and that the only thing snapping at their heels is their imaginations, but they like the idea of a wild, scary creature roaming the woods.

Unfortunately the midges are very real and I have the scars to prove it. This has been a bumper year for the critters and they’ve got a nasty habit of swarming at that very time in the evening I like to wander about the garden, watering some things and deadheading the rest.

Ticks are another hazard, and if you get bite from one of these, then you need to seek medical help as a course of antibiotics may be necessary to avoid Lyme disease, which can have nasty, long-term consequences for your health.

And next time you visit your GP, ask about your antitetanus status. If it’s longer than 10 years since you’ve had a booster then you may need another in order to give you protection in case you get a cut or a nasty scratch while working the the garden.

I was trying to remember how long it was since I had my last anti-tetanus while I was tying in a climbing rose. The thorns were vicious, causing deep scratches on my hands and arms.

The purple berberis that grows beneath the laurel hedge is another lethal shrub.

The leaves are soft, but between lie slender thorns that are as sharp as needles.

After several run-ins I’ve given up adding its stems to vases of cut flowers and now opt for the leaves of the purple smoke bush that grows nearby.

Thorns are a defence mechanism but they don’t always work. I’ve seen whole rose beds demolished by deer, who seem impervious to the pain that these sharp prongs must cause.

Sometimes, though, spikes do fulfill their function and a hawthorn hedge, protected by barbs is the ideal place for sparrows to nest, safe from the attentions of the local cats.

If you are pruning a hawthorn hedge, or any other spiny shrub, don’t waste the trimmings. Scattered around hostas and lettuces, these provide a natural deterrent against snails and slugs.

The marks on my arms have made me rethink my plans for the sunny wall half-smothered in wisteria.

Instead of growing a peachcoloured rose, as planned, I’m considering pink-flowered ‘Zepherine Drouhin’ for the simple reason that it’s the only truly thornless rose that I know of and pruning it would be a pleasure and not a pain.