THE HEDGE AS PRELUDE

AUGUST 31, 2024 – (Cont.) The main, 200-foot-long hedge runs from the corner of Cove Road and Oakland to the stone-and-mortar pillars at the entrance to the property. Having walked and driven numerous times along the neglected landscaping over the previous several days, I decided to follow Michelle Obama’s standing entreaty and “DO SOMETHING.” Much of the growth was eight feet high, and much of it wasn’t even a hedge but interloper vegetation—oak saplings, maples, sumac and sprawling vines with stems an inch thick at their base. Weeds four- and five-feet long grew at an angle out from the side and over the road. For added excitement the Connecticut State Plant (it seemed)—poison ivy—thrived along the foot of what had become a veritable jungle “hedge.”

When I announced my intentions, three family members urged me to use the electric hedge-trimmer that was “somewhere” in the combination garage/pump house/work shed. This well-meaning exhortation ignored the fact that the tool is intended for hedges, not trees. Moreover, no one told me where I could find a 500-foot extension cord.

Before rounding up manual pruning shears, I worked for an hour yanking out by the roots the tallest of the weeds that leaned over the roadway. I tossed them onto the pavement and in short order the resulting scene reminded me of Sunday School pictures of the road into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when the locals welcomed Jesus by casting palm fronds all over the way of his procession. In Sunday school we never learned who, if anyone, picked up the mess afterward, but I knew that unless I raked up the uprooted weeds, no one else would.

After widening visibility of road a good two feet, I hauled out a saw and shears and began chopping things down to size. Only three days remained before our cousin Carol and her husband were scheduled to arrive. Half my daytime waking hours were already spoken for—our grandson’s big birthday party and after-party; baby-sitting duties; errands; commitments; even legal work. I knew that whatever I started, I couldn’t finish in less than a month—without a chain saw, a Bobcat with a front-end bucket, and four-yard dump truck. But if I could cut, slash and prune enough to demonstrate convincingly my vision for the place, Carol might grant me some credit for honoring the memory of our great-grandparents, who’d presided over The Escape Hatch in its halcyon years. I worked feverishly on one side of the jungle, then the other, back and forth. A tiresome pattern developed by which I would snip-snip-snip, cut-cut-cut as far as my reach into the vegetative tangle would allow. I’d then determine that to continue across the width of the morass, I’d have to find my way to the other side, where surely the stems and stalks that were beyond the range of my shears would be easily accessible. Yet after hiking down to the corner of the property and through the narrow opening around to the other side, then back up to where I’d been pruning on the other side . . . Lo and behold: the previously out-of-range vegetation seemed no more accessible than it had been back on the other side!

Eventually I realized that the work I’d undertaken was better suited for one of the many professional crews that one continually sees at work in the area. But as the reader learned earlier in this series, in a previous life I fancied myself as a “landscape artist.” Now I could enjoy reincarnation as such. This thought gave me great satisfaction as I cut and pruned away and gathered up the cuttings into multiple heaps for later disposal over the bank in front of the house. I recognized, however, that in addition to my “landscape artist” fantasy, something else was at play: my compulsion for trimming and pruning trees and shrubs.

Odd, eccentric, even bizarre? Not any more so, I thought, than other fetishes among family members. Some are obsessed with grammar, usage and diction; others place an inordinate premium on sartorial perfection; others are obsessed with crafting limericks; some focus on saving money; others on spending it; several follow major league sports; others eschew sports altogether. The list is endless. When my wife chides me for over-reacting to someone’s misuse of “lie” and “lay,” then says, “You’re not wearing that to dinner, are you?” I explain that my choice of trousers is no worse than a person using “lay” when they should be saying “lie.” This analogy never fails not to impress.

In any event, after ferrying 52 armloads of cut, chopped, sawed, pruned, yanked and uprooted vegetation (nothing less than air, earth, fire (sun), and water transformed by osmosis and photosynthesis), I was as ready as I would be for the arrival of our cousin and her husband.  They knew nothing of my project and would have little to say about it once they arrived. That was wholly appropriate. We had far more important things to talk about—a good 60 years since we’d last met. (Cont.)            

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson