Short back and sides

The problem when giving some of my trees a haircut was always that it's really hard to sweep up all the needles and twigs from the ground because the ground is laid with those lovely little round pebbles – chuckies – and I didn't have any big dustsheets, only a couple of wee ones. I would forever trim a bit, move the sheet around, trim a bit more, empty it into the bin, and so on.  Doing one tree would take me about an hour, assuming it wasn't also windy, and they're not even big trees.

I had the brainwave the other day that what I needed was a sort of dustsheet version of the cloak you put on at the hairdresser, something to go around the trunk and spread out on the ground in a circle.  Maybe I could get a couple of tarpaulins and tie them together with a bungee cord or something.  So since it wasn't raining (much) this morning, I whizzed out on Fidra to B&Q and got some bungee cord, but I couldn't find tarpaulin anywhere, so I had another brainwave and went home via the builder's merchant whom it turned out had many tarps.  I bought one that was modestly gigantic, thinking that I could buy a second if I needed it. I laid it out, pulled it around and hey presto! So out with the hedgetrimmer and I did two trees in half an hour.

Of course, because I am also a bear of very little brain, my neighbour helpfully reminded me that today is Wednesday and not Tuesday, which means the garden waste collection was this morning. Even better, it was the last one of the year.  I wonder how many dumpy bags I can carry on a Pan Euro?