My garden is Mordor on a bad day

Okay, so I've posted a few pretty pics of the multitude of photogenic wildlife in my two and a half acres. But it isn't always sunshine and the scent of honeysuckle here - oh no! Often the place drives me mad and I wonder why I'm bothering to stick it out when I could be in a nice normal house where Pizza Hut delivers and I can walk out for a coffee.

I was re-reading Lord of the Rings last winter (a nice wintery evening thing to be doing) and I came across this passage in The Return of the King. I am now convinced that J.R.R. Tolkien must have been on holiday near here when he was writing this bit of the book because it is spot-on:

Upon its outer margins under the westward mountains...was a dying land, but it was not yet dead. And here things still grew, harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling for life. In the glens...on the other side of the valley low scrubby trees lurked and clung, coarse grey grass-tussocks fought with the stones, and withered mosses crawled on them; and everywhere great writhing, tangled brambles sprawled. Some had long stabbing thorns, some hooked barbs that rent like knives. The sullen shrivelled leaves of a past year hung on them, grating and rattling in the sad airs, but their maggot-ridden buds were only just opening. Flies, dun or grey, or black marked like orcs with a red eye-shaped blotch, buzzed and stung; and above the briar-thickets clouds of hungry midges danced and reeled.

Do you get the feeling that he was having his revenge on some ghastly holiday? I bet it was near here!