Back from the cold north, and currently in that weird limbo between freedom and the horror of work, in tandem with the onset of spring and its attendant wobbliness.

Oh, and I hate Japanese gardeners. They suck. They are stinking crusty old gangs of farting coffin-dodgers who wreck everything they touch and charge you huge amounts of money for the privilege.

A few years ago I had a garden full of big beautiful trees whose name I can’t remember. Enter the gardeners. Their idea of pruning was to just lop the top off all of them. Hey! - instant ugliness and half of them died a few months later. For this great work they were paid $1000 (not by me, I hasten to add).

Last summer the shitheads return, not at my behest, of course. While I’m away in France they go about their dastardly work and once more hack up half of the trees. I am incensed upon my return. Beautiful lush trees have been pruned back to ugly stumps. “Don’t worry“, I’m told, “they will grow back.” Then why prune them?!!!!

And now guess what - not only have they not grown back, I discover that seven trees have actually died, and many others are diseased and on the way out. So I do a little research on the Interweb and find that the practice of “topping” (hacking off the top) is nowadays only the preserve of barbarians and filthy illiterate peasants, like the morons in stupid hats who butchered my botanics. It permanently disfigures trees, and sends them into shock. If they survive this, they grow abnormally and faster than ever to compensate. They also become more susceptible to disease and death. Real pruning techniques involve only thinning out the tree whilst maintaining its natural shape. Those dumb-arsed retards!

A pox on all Japanese gardeners. May they all be found strangled to death by Ents, gormless mouths stuffed full of mulch, limbs hacked off into ugly stumps.

Oh, and please take a look at my nice new pictures from my holidays over at the ‘Photos‘ section. Here’s a sneaky little preview. Have a nice day! (unless you are a Japanese gardener).