Since I bought my house last March, I have bought two lawn tools: a weed whacker and pruning shears. The first time I tried the weed whacker, oh my gosh, was it fun to whack away at those weeds, which had overtaken much of my jungle-cum-yard, and had started growing out of my fence onto the sidewalk (much to the distress of my elderly neighbor who didn’t hesitate to tell me about it). A friend came over that night and together we whacked away all the weeds in the front of the yard, and it felt so satisfying cutting them all down. It was the same sort of satisfaction I get from popping bubble wrap or spitting the ends of my heat-treated, damaged hair.
I also bought Weed B Gone, and 10 days ago, I spent an hour spraying each and every weed and weed patch in my yard, and have had the pleasure of watching many of them slowly shrivel up.
Last week, as I was enjoying a book on my front porch, I received a small pair of pruning shears I had ordered from Amazon, a bestselling inexpensive pair, and I immediately felt inspired to get to chopping away at more weeds. Boy did they ever do they job! What the weed whacker couldn’t whack, these handy shears snapped away with one brisk stroke. They cut through fairly good sized branches and stems that the weed whacker simply couldn’t whack away. I cut down thick ivy vines that are strangling two beautiful old trees and branches off things that I can’t even identify. I trimmed back a tree that was overtaking the walkway up to my porch and was starting to grow out past my property line over the sidewalk. I may have gone a bit too far with that, actually, and I hope some of it will grow back. The sheers were efficient – it all took me about an hour and a half to do all of this, and I have a fairly good sized yard for an inner city neighborhood. I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, too.
One admitted challenge was that I was not entirely sure I was always whacking and hacking weeds or whether some of these plants may have been actual landscaping from a previous owner. Who knows? I don’t. But that didn’t stop me from hacking away with reckless abandon!
What worries me is how much I enjoyed whacking away and destroying all those weeds. What does that say about me? And who says these plants are really so undesirable? These poor plants have survived my likely lack of topsoil and my total neglect for my yard, as well as a fairly dry summer so far, while the more “desirable” plants like my grass totally failed to thrive. Didn’t those weeds deserve to live, given how much they had overcome?
I have plans to whack more weeds and ivy after work tonight…
The Tarot Realm 