And the award for the most pointless mowing goes to...

It seems like the pretty flowers and wildlife in the alleyway the other day were all a little too overwhelming for one local resident, and this was the view that greeted me when I walked out there this morning. Someone had decided to cut down a 10 metre stretch of lush flowering grasses and plantain for no reason...

Alas, there have been greater atrocities inflicted on nature by humans, but on a local scale there is nothing to gain from cutting down the middle part of this rarely used, overgrown track. The tallest stalks of plantain were no higher than 3 inches, so it wouldn't exactly present an obstacle to passing cars, and it doesn't exactly form part of anyone's garden.

'Tidiness' is a man-made concept - why do we feel the need to constantly inflict it on the natural world?