The weirdest thing happened last week!

With the sudden dehydration of my plants last week, I began looking into possible reasons for their sorry-looking state and after ruling out the possibility that someone had deliberately poisoned them (why would they anyway? I'm a lovely person!) I settled for the fact that the large trees that the council planted behind my garden for privacy are having a last minute binge-drinking session before the autumn really kicks in and are taking all of the moisture from the ground. Combined with the fact that it hasn't actually rained for nearly four weeks now and the ending result is the smaller plants suffer!

Whilst out there examining my poorly plants and pleading with them to fight for survival, I got whacked on the head by a ridiculously large branch that was overhanging my garden. Not content with killing my plants, the trees were starting on me now!

Well, I wasn't having any of this and so - armed with my Felco secateurs - I promptly chopped off the offending limb and a few others for good measure. As I hacked away at the tree it attempted to fight back by launching large chunks of dead branches down at me. If anyone had walked by at that moment I'm not sure if I'd have been reported for cruelty to trees but it wasn't a pretty fight, all-in-all.

Standing back and admiring my handiwork, I started to take pity on the tree. It is full of dead wood and just looks in a sorry state. despite it only being 20 years old - a mere baby in the tree world.

I decided that I'd contact the council and ask them to have a little look at it and maybe give it some much needed TLC. I penned a letter, sent it off, and three days later received a reply that somebody would come out the following day and that all of the trees (six in total) were scheduled for pruning this Autumn anyway.

Shock Horror!! A prompt reply from the council! What's going on? It's unheard of!

Anyway, the next day came and, sure enough, so did three men armed with chainsaws.

Within an hour they had chopped down the neighbouring tree to mine. I'm hoping that they'd planned to do that and that they got the right tree, but either way, it has made such a difference to my garden - I now have sunlight after 1pm in the afternoon and I have a view.

As for 'my' tree? It's still exactly the same! Oh well, can't expect the council to get it right everytime, can you?!