Might have lost the post and pic...here's another

I have probably moaned on about this undesired acquisition before (via one of the offspring) but now I feel overwhelmed and miserable that literally half of the south facing wall has been colonised by a sodding great evergreen. I cannot quite envisage removing the whole thing (you can barely swing a hamster, let alone a cat) but something must be done because the top half is in gloom and the soil is like a desert with every poor plant straining wildly sideways to catch a few rays of sparse sunlight. I know the enswer, I suppose. I just want some hand holding and commiseration.

Have pruned ceonothus back before - they sulk, then die! Bloody, bloody arse.

I can't see clearly enough.......is that a ceanothus? IME, they are rather easily prunable. In fact, you often see them hedged here. I might have started this process sooner but I'd try that method before a full removal.

Indeed so GG. When in bloom (for 3 weeks) it is lovely (I think it is Concha, a really good deep blue) but I would never, in a million years, have chosen to plant this in my tiny garden (I was...ahem...'looking after it' during a house move. 8 years or so later, it is now a looming monster. O...and not the only beast...there is a stonking great 'gift' of a whopping lilac. It's hard to explain quite how I ended up in this state (I know...I am as bewildered as anyone by my obvious lack of ruthlessness. I am stony hearted as anything when it comes to my 'own' plants (Despite having residence in MY garden for all this time, offspring likes to fondly imagine he somehow has equal dibs on this monster...and because I so thoroughly 'educated' them to take an interest in horticulture, the issue of ownership and responsibility has become terminally muddled. Sigh...I know, I know...

30 years on, I still have the (now freaking enormous) goldfish, also abandoned into my untender care...which resolutely refuse to decently die. I thought their number was up, a month or so ago, after waking up and opening the curtains to find a massive heron peering through the window but it was sadly thwarted by the wire netting I had installed to prevent fishy suicidal leaps into the flower beds. I often look longingly at the toilet and think 'one quick flush'. Or hoping one of the neighbourhood cats does the deed (but the patrolling sheepdog prevents that, unfortunately).

Oh, suzy!! I am chuckling over your woes. Not that I am unsympathetic, because I do feel for you, but you have a fun way of writing that I do enjoy. You are far too ruth and need to develop a higher plane of ruthlessness! Go, girl!! =)