I helped Mr S and his wife deal with a wisteria plant that had grown out of control. At first, I thought the job was to trim it into a reasonable shape. But as the stems were cut back, a different idea started taking shape in Mrs S's mind.

"Do you know someone who could take out this tree?" - Mrs S.
"So you don't want to keep it at all?" - Kash.
"I hate it. It took me three days to cut it back last time."
"Do you have a saw?"

The saw was available indeed. So was the ladder. I changed tactics, aiming to remove the tree. Sawing off the main stems would take me a few minutes, but Mrs S rightly raised concerns about the neighbours' garden.

"This is our tree, but it grows on the other side of the wall too. What if it falls on the neighbours' plots? They are growing veggies there."

The wisteria was extremely tangled, and there was no way I could just cut down the tree and hope everything would fall on Mr S's side. Half of the tree's crown grew on the neighbours' side, and half of those branches had made their way there through the ornamental holes in the wall.

I had to hop onto the ladder and work my way down from the top of the tree, making sure no cuttings ended up in the neighbours' garden — either ones cut that day or ones that might fall later from a branch I'd cut low and left to wither. From that height, I spotted that the neighbours across the wall must have embraced their part of the wisteria and hung a couple of lights or charms on its branches.

With all those discoveries, Mrs S and I decided against rushing to saw the tree down that day and instead collected the cuttings into five bags. We carried them to the front of the house and emptied them into a green bin. Even with me stamping down the green waste, there was no way it would all fit in the bin. Luckily, a neighbour from across the road rushed over to offer Mrs S some space in his wheelie bin.

No wonder Mrs S makes her neighbours such great allies!