Destroy-It-Yourself?

Today I mourn the likely loss of the prettiest clematis in the whole garden...

I don't know it's name, but now it's residing in a big sack of soil and compost round the back of the kitchen in the shadiest place I could find that is still close by so that I would be encouraged to keep a watching eye on it.

Why this horticultural terrorism? To rip a lovely plant out of its home in the peak of the flowering season? Ridiculous! Foolhardy! Doomed to disaster! All of the above, I plead - but also the only chance it has for survival.  It is in the path of our (hopefully imminent) scaffolders and sandblasters - individuals not normally known for their delicacy of approach towards the plant kingdom ( though I may be casting aspersions here undeservedly)....

It's neighbour on the wall, a 4 foot high ball of pyracantha, met a more sinister fate - I'm afraid it was unceremoniously sawn off at the base and burned! So at least the clematis has one hope...

As you can see, we still need to dig out the stumps, but this huge evergreen shrub surely hasn't been helping very much in this poor wall's failed struggle to dry out!  

Considering the stone planting corner where the clematis lived had a solid stone flagged base, and was hard up against the air brick on the poorly wall side and had bridged the damp proof course on the modern construction of the porch I'm amazed it hasn't been taken out earlier! When we eventually prized the wretched rootball away from the corner, which was only physically possible by dismantling the stone planter walls around it (!) we discovered it had sent its thick mat of fibrous roots backwards through the crack of the corner, and was surviving by growing into the space between planter and house walls:

To think how Monty et al normally insist we mollycoddle our clematis in terms of planting site and conditions, it is truly miraculous how this one was even surviving, never mind growing as lustily as it was!!!

So hopefully it will take these survival instincts with it for its sojourn in the compost sack until a more appropriate permanent home is decided upon.  As long as it doesn't take fatal offence at having its home sledgehammered apart followed by its rootball sawn into with a bread knife!!! Fingers crossed xxx