It was the hottest day of the year but then, when isn’t it? We’d already booked the chainsaw and we weren’t letting the prospect of 33C heat stop us. The idea had arrived as I was hacking away (technical term) at a shrub that had grown into a tree. It felt somehow thrilling to rent a chainsaw for the day, as if I were ordering a contract horticultural killing via a garden-variety Villanelle. By the time the day came, the removal of the shrubs-that-are-trees had become something of an obsession.

Source: The Times August 13, 2020 23:03 UTC