Leaves!

There are many joys to having a large garden and this includes having mature forest trees - we have ash, rowan, willow, holly, yew, oak and beech plus an array of rhododendron. All magnificent, glorious and bringing pleasure.

Until autumn when the problems with trees hits in - leaves. Vast blankets of leaves. Leaves drifting into the front room. Leaves making the steps into a slide. Leaves clogging up the pond and the fountain. Everywhere you look - bloody leaves.

And those leaves can also bring about the second of the problems - neighbours. Not that I fall out with the neighbours you understand (and, with a large garden we have around 20) but they don't have the same happy relationship with our trees. The trees fill their gardens up with leaves, take away their light and, when high winds come, lead to worries about trees blowing over onto garages, cars or garden sheds. When Sir Anthony Steen got into trouble for his expenses, I sympathised with his tree problem - if not his source of payment!

I've only 50 or so trees - can you imagine just how many leaves 500 would generate! It would justify one of these rather than one of these.