Shrubs cringe when they see me coming.

I was surprised to discover there's a sidewalk going to our front porch. Actually, I was surprised to find we had a front porch. I just thought there was a trail through the jungle leading to our front door.

Taking advantage of last weekend's sunshine and nice weather, Kim and I spent Saturday trimming shrubs and cleaning the flowerbed in front of our house. As you may have surmised, it had been a while since we last trimmed the assorted flora in front of the house.

Evergreen plants had grown into each other. Pampas grass had intermingled with the other plants. And the groundcover had joined with the evergreens to create their own hybrids. Few things are as surprising as grabbing a vine that leads into a branch that becomes a root so embedded in the ground it makes you actually consider blasting.

Now, I wouldn't say our plant life had gotten out of hand. A bit tall, maybe. A bit spread out, sure. But out of hand, never.

As we hacked our way through the miniature rain forest, Kim and I realized we probably should do this more often.

Anyway, Kim decided there should be a limit on which tools I'm allowed to handle just because I tend to push them to their maximum capacity. Sure, the hedge clippers bent, but that was just because I bit off a bigger limb than they could cut.

And, besides, we managed to bend them pretty much back into shape all three times I bent them. Or was it four?
You just can't let a shrub's limb get the better of you, and sometimes you just have to apply a little extra elbow grease to the clippers.

Kim brought me a saw to remove some of the limbs too big for the clippers. I got most of the way through one limb before the saw blade broke. She says I broke the blade. I say the limb broke it, even if I was putting pressure to it.

Then Kim came up with a hatchet. She figured even I couldn't break a hatchet.

Fortunately, she was right. The hatchet remains intact. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for one of our shrubs.
It took up a good portion of the bed it shared with other plants. It had entwined with others, so that you had to literally unwrap a limb from the neighboring evergreen.

I used the hatchet to finish cutting the limb that had broken the saw. It took two whacks. There was another limb snaking through the shrub next to it. I managed to get it loose and used the hatchet on it. Right next to that one was another that had gone astray, so I trimmed it with the hatchet.

I thought I was doing pretty well. Then Kim told me there was only one limb left on the plant, and I might as well finish cutting the poor thing down. I pointed out that at least we could get to the water faucet now.
This was the same water faucet that only a short time earlier had been enshrouded in overgrowth like some Mayan artifact.

There had been a soaker hose attached to the faucet, but it broke when I pulled it out of the mulch where it had been buried. Pretending it was an anorexic anaconda didn't even evoke a smile from Kim.

Finally, we got everything trimmed and hauled away. So we decided to mow the yard. Well, Kim did the mowing on the riding mower. I did the grunt work with the weed trimmer. I try to be thorough when I use the trimmer. I take a bare earth approach to lawn trimming. I cut every weed and the grass the mower can't touch down to the ground.

That way, unless we're soaked like monsoons as we have been this spring, those areas don't grow as fast and don't have to be cut as often.

OK, so the ground beneath Amelia's swing set looks like a mangy dog with the grass trimmed to its roots. But it's not as tall this week as the yard around it. One thing about our yard is it doesn't need fertilizer. It grows fast and tall enough on its own.

That's why I look forward to dry summers, or at least not having rain every day. For that, I could move to the Amazon. Or Seattle. Whichever would be more hospitable.

It's nice to get out and do work like that every now and then. You feel as if you've accomplished something when you finish. Everything looked so much better, too, except for that small stump by the faucet.

So, if you need your shrubs trimmed, I still have my hatchet.

Thought for the Week: "If it doesn't work the first time, get a bigger hammer."