I’m really lucky in that I get to work from home a few days a week. I love these days as I don’t have to get up at silly o’clock and with no distractions I seem to plough through work 10 times faster than when I am in the office. I also get to see Bumpkinsville in the daylight and sometimes there are weird things to see.

Last week I was on a conference call and wandering around as I talked. I stood looking out the back door at my overgrown postage stamp of a garden. I’m a terrible gardener and only tend to do things out there if the weather is warm and sunny and something really, really needs to be done. I still noticed though, that the bushes and rose tree on one side had all….shrunk. When the call finished I went outside to investigate. All the bushes had been pruned and the trimmings were scattered around the garden. Now I knew I’d not done it and Norman is missing the opposable thumbs required to operate pruning shears. My neighbour is an enthusiastic gardener and I could see his footprints in the earth right at the edge of the fence between our gardeners. It would seem that he’d managed some sort of contortion manoeuvres and pruned everything he could reach. Not just the bits that might over hang his garden. Now, I assume that this was meant in a helpful sort of way but I was trying to grow them all and actually, it made me feel rather grumpy.

I’m not keen on confrontation (or even a ‘thank you very much, but…’) so I’m quite happy I’ve not seen my neighbour since, but today I was working on my laptop at my table by the window and saw him leave his house. With his garden shears. He charged over to a hedge in a shared area (which is maintained centrally) and started snipping.

I can’t work it out. Does he have an obsession with pruning? Has he been watching Edward Scissorhands? Should I make him some sort of cape so that he can carry out his trimming in disguise?

possibly? Or maybe not…

Oooh, now there’s a thought. Something good might have come out of this. I’ll have to let you know if it works :o)