The Inescapable Dictates of Fate

I go out to contemplate the carnage, occassionally, beer in hand. I sometimes go out to further the carnage, shovel, chain saw, or clippers in hand. While yard work has its moments, I would say digging out a yew hedge is not one of them. I've dug out boxwood hedges, small maple trees, a not so small crabapple tree, brambles, honeysuckle, and rose of sharons. I've plants rose bushes, transplanted rose bushes, transplanted hydranges, planted hydranges, planted a cousa dogwood, plum tree, dogwood, 2 lilac trees, and a small eastern redbud. I've dug out bushes and planted bushes. I've dug out a wisteria, and won't ever plant one. But nothing amoung the perinials or annuals of my small yard has ever inspired in me such an urge for contemplation, or recognition of.... destiny.

To dig stuff out, you have to dig around the thing, as close as possible. Clipping and sawing roots as you go. Maples aren't as tough as you might think. There is the mother root... shoot off from the parent, and the tap root. Roots seem generally to be softer. The exception being the yew bush. Hence, the chain saw.

My parents built a house when I was a kid. (They didn't do it themselves... they hired a contractor, architect, and whatnot.) And the house was cut into the hillside instead of being built on the hillside. (Stuff happens.) Anyway, we ended up with a devastated yard and a drainage problem. With 4 kids, that's almost a solution to another problem. We built culverts everywhere. Wheelbarrows, large rocks, clay earth, topsoil and shovels are my most basic connection to that time and that place. (Well, and the workroom. The workroom was GREAT.) One time I remember us taking a wheelbarrow down to the end of the street... approximately a city block away... to collect our irises that had washed away in a storm.

What I'm saying is... I can't help it. Like a duck, there's imprinting and heredity to consider. If the yew hedge wasn't there, I wouldn't be doing this. But stuff happens.