Yes, sorry about the title. It amused me and then I couldn't get it out of my mind so I just had to use it. And in case you're wondering how this related to my usual Thursday gardening post, bear with me...
On Monday we had the gardeners in for some tree work, and our Laurel had some attention. It's a large tree - or it was in any case - and while we have it cut fairly regularly, each time you cut a tree it just grows a bit more. So it is always increasing its size, and that's been the case with our tree. It's grown so much that it almost half covers our stone circle, we know this because only half of it gets wet in the rain!
So it was time for some drastic action. Here's the before shot, looking up our garden:
On the right you can see the trees we had pollarded back in November 2014, and how much they've grown since then.
And here's the after shot:
Doesn't it open the garden up?
I hadn't realised how much the Laurel was dominating the end of our garden, until it had gone. We can see the pear that's in blossom now and it feels so much lighter in that part of the garden too.
It was a severe cut on purpose to control its size, it's a plucky little thing and will grow back although it will look a little bald for a while I think.
And can you spot the saw the gardeners left by mistake?
They'll be needing to come back and retrieve that one themselves! Luckily they're due back at some point to give our non-fruiting large cherry tree some similar treatment.
And of course, all of that greenery had to go somewhere...
And in our case it filled the rear part of our garden, and started to edge down towards the house too before it was carried through the house and formed a pile under our front window.
I'd moved my car and it made a change to have a different view for a while...
It wasn't long before this was loaded into the back of their van - completely filling it - and they were sweeping our drive and we were off out on a Bank Holiday bike ride!
I'm sure that the non-fruiting cherry tree is looking on smugly, but little does it know...