You Can Lead A Horticulture…
...but you can’t make her think. (I love Dorothy Parker)
Well, I can get enthusiastic enough to prune, but you can’t make me stop at a sensible time.
In addition to the thriving blackberries, I also have three gigantic, neglected, overgrown bushes: A forsythia, a mock orange, and something with pink flowers. Seriously neglected. Dead wood holds up more dead wood, some twenty feet in the air. So yesterday, I tried my hand at pruning.
I worked HARD. When the ancient pruning shears didn’t work, I started in on the bushes with a hatchet. As a result, I have a pile comprised of about half a tree in my yard.
And this morning I woke up SO sore. It turns out whacking the hell out of bushes the size of trees for three hours is pretty dumb, unless you are a lumberjack. Which I am not, although I wished fervently for a chainsaw several times yesterday. I was so stiff I could hardly write. That’s how stiff.
The depressing part? I’m only about a quarter of the way done.
Some Stuff | Liz May 26, 2008
By Beth, May 27, 2008 @ 7:07 am
Good pruning shears would make a difference. More hand soreness, less overall soreness.
By rachel, May 27, 2008 @ 5:51 pm
A hatchet? Dear god, woman! Beth knows whereof she speaks, but for larger branches, get some long-handled loppers. Those’ll cut through up to about 3cm diameter, with minimal effort because the handles are so long.