Nettles and Roses

This garden was once a narrow road running alongside the canal and the mill where trucks dropped off the wheat berries and picked up the flour.
During the war a wall was built at the side of the mill.  Barn doors running on rails enabled the trucks access during the day and were shut at night to stop flour being stolen by hungry, rationed people.
Jean abided by no rules and when the mill closed down he created a terraced garden on public land. The 30 years are well up so we shouldn't have any beef with the law.
Jean must have devoted a lot of time and effort creating his garden.  The terraces are stone walled and he thought up a clever viaduct system, a miniature Pont du Gard, to direct rain water into one of the ponds.  

Then he let it all go.

When we bought the mill we had to fight through  nettles and brambles with sticks to get down the mossy path.  I took on the challenge, ripping them up and digging my hands down deep to extricate their endless, entangled roots, the bones of dead dogs and cats, sardine tins and bunches of nails that had rusted into clumps.  We dragged the pyracantha off the walls, cut down the space and sun deprived trees so the others could flourish.  And the sun finally got through.
For a long time wild, spiky nature evaded my efforts but for the first time in three years it and I have come to a compromise.  I keep the mossy grass down and tend to the garden's immigrants - wild sage, lavender, cyanothus, water iris and summer jasmine and nature rather beautifully does what it wants to do.
The climbing rose must have twisted up the fig tree for years, its trunk is as wide as an outstretched leg and I've created a symbiotic relationship with the nettles, allowing some to continue growing so we can eat them.