Pruning and generally cutting back vegetation is not my natural thing. Unlike my father, who has waged grim war with invasive weeds, ivy and old man’s beard, I have a weakness for letting nature take its course. Just now I am admiring the amazing vigour of our cottage-embracing vine, forcing its tendrils through my study window as I write. Likewise the privet hedge, growing wildly in all directions. Ching Ling silently hands me the hedge-cutting shears. I am on the side of untamed growth, she on the side of discipline.

I look to my Latin classics for guidance and support. First comes Virgil. I think I can rely on him, always sympathetic to the underdog, to be lenient here. I am glad to read in the second Georgic the following advice about vine-pruning: “and while the shoot ... pushes joyously skyward, you must not yet attack the plants themselves with the knife’s edge, but with bent fingers pluck the leaves and pick them here and there.”