Epic struggle

We've spent most of this summer wrestling a severely overgrown garden into submission using the best Amazonian slash-and-burn techniques. This evil privet thing wouldn't die when it was chopped down, but fought back against saws, forks, spades, chopping implements borrowed from next door and the moat we dug round its roots (uncovering a good three dozen bricks in the process). The picture represents its final surrender, just after it rolled out of the trench and just before I fell flat onto it. 85% of it is still squatting malevolently in the bonfire patch, charred but unpleasantly solid.