Scorched Earth Campaign
I broke down and hired a landscape maintenance company to clean up our yard. It has gotten so far our of our control this past year! Ian and I have been busy doing things like running companies and raising humans, so it’s not like we’ve been slackin’ or anything. But we let the yard get to the point where it’s hard to see all the landscaping we once had, which kinda makes all that hard work we previously put into the property moot.
So, it’s fall and the leaves are falling and the grass and weeds are a foot high. Our neighbors probably hate us. With no end of busyness in sight and a powerful feeling of being grossly overwhelmed by Nature’s bounty, we made the call for help.
The workers have been here a day and a half. They have weeded out pernicious bermuda grass and pruned many shrubs down to the ground. They have lopped off limbs, cut out suckers from trees, and taken a year’s worth of leaves out of the “flower beds.” The tackled the wisteria from hell. They uncovered the strangled daylilies. They vanquished the blackberries. They filled a giant truck with tall sides (smaller than a semi, much bigger than a pickup) to its brim with yard waste and hauled it away. Then they brought it back again for another load. Eventually, they chopped and cleared enough of the jungle to actually mow the lawns.
I know that this work was desperately needed. I know that my plants will be happier for having the space and resources to grow in the coming year. I can look around and see so much that’s improved. But the truth is, this kind of tough love is difficult for me to accept. I love a riotous garden bursting with color and exhuberant growth. The area of my backyard that I think of as my future “secret garden” isn’t so hidden as it used to be, now that the workers have gone and unchoked the bushes. Low tree limbs that I liked are no longer reaching; vines turning a gorgeous rust color with the cold are no longer writhing up my house. Without the carpet of red and gold leaves and the overgrowth, it’s kind of scrubby and bare around here now.
It will grow back. It always grows back. I can’t help but feel a little sad, even though I tipped them.
