Hell on Whacking

[madrobins]

Pretty much my only gardening activity is pruning. If I try to do anything else I inadvertently kill things. So I generally don't even try; the only things I've ever kept alive were a pot of basil in our south-facing window in New York (I suspect the sun supplied everything I forgot to provide), and a small jade plant in my college dorm room. But I am, as Harrison Ford put it in Witness, Hell on Whacking, pruning wise. Today I pruned the lemon tree and the whatever-the-hell-it-is tree that grows to the left of the back door. With that and what Spouse (who is a far better yardsman than I am, except he almost never does it unless I start things off) weeded and pruned, we filled fourteen 33-gallon yard bags, plus the composting bin. A third of that was lemons in various stages of decomposition. I have to say, if you're going to stuff your small car with many bags of yard waste and take them to the dump, having the yard waste come from a lemon tree is a fragrant and pleasant thing.

Now, of course, I ache all over. But I am full of a sense of virtue, which will likely last until I have to get up in the morning.