Still annoyed about this...

If you've seen pictures I've posted of our back garden (like these) you may have noticed some trees and bushes at the foot of the garden, including a big blue hydraengea, wild roses, a camellia and various trees I can't name. They aren't in our garden, but just over the wall at the edge of a disused rice field. Everyone who comes here comments on how nice it is to have them there - they block the view of weeds in the fields and the road beyond and they attract a lot of birds.

Now think back to my last post, when I said H brought me roses to cheer me up. Yes, when I came home on Wednesday at lunchtime, the trees and bushes were all being cut down. Sadly it now looks like this:

That's just a mass of weeds you can see there now, the same as the other disused rice fields in the background. Close up it's even more depressing:

When I saw what was going on I went out to talk the person doing the cutting - the 80 year old, younger sister of the old woman who owns the field. Apparently a tenant of the house that used to stand here planted those trees years ago, without the permission of the landowner who has wanted them gone ever since. Why, and why she waited until now to do anything about it, I'm still not sure. The old lady refuses to sell or rent the land to the guy who is growing rice in the surrounding fields. The overgrown part of the field is a problem for him because a) all the weed seeds end up in his fields and b) he has to go around it all the time to get to his land.

Now it is of course completely up to this woman what she does with her land, especially with trees she never wanted in the first place. What annoys me is that there seems to be no point in the tree-cutting. There are no plans to start using the field again, and I can't see how those trees bothered anyone. I'm interested to see if they are going to do anything about all those weeds, but I'm doubtful.

So that's why I needed cheering up. It was really quite upsetting to see those trees being cut down...