My dad. He's the ultimate pruner. When we lived about 15 minutes away from each other, I'd ask him to come to my place to prune my trees and shrubs. He seemed to always be up to the task. Or, perhaps he just likes playing with sharp objects. Either way, he enjoys himself whilst hacking things to the nubbins.

Before marrying the bearded eye-roller , I lived in a 'shared wall' home. It's kinda like a duplex, but you own your home and have your own fenced yard, etc. There was a shrub in need of pruning between mine and my neighbors' driveway, and I asked my dad if he would prune it for me one time. He asked me what shape I'd like and I told him that I wanted it to look like an elephant balancing a ball on its trunk.

He took me seriously.

Let's just say that it didn't look anything like the Disneyland image I had in my head. In fact, my neighbor's only comment was, "Well, isn't that interesting...."

Since they live a few states away, I am now the pruner of my domain. BER gets a little nervous when he sees me with:
A: Pruning shears
B: Electric hedge trimmer
C: THE MACHETE (absolutely deserving of upper case letters)


Whilst gardening on Saturday, I decided to 'trim' one of the trees in my garden. It's been bugging the livin' daylights out of me. Have you ever trimmed your bangs and saw that they were uneven, so you trimmed a little more, and then more again? Well, my tree trimming adventure was something like that. BER was standing by, looking rather nervous as I was having my little adventure.

Eventually he said, "Honey, soon it's just going to be a big stick", and then he made me hand over my shears. Between you and me, I'd have to say that he was right. It now bugs the livin' daylights out of me because it looks just weird. (it's the little tree with the pole holding it up.)


I mentioned to him that next weekend will involve lots of pruning and thinning out some of the stuff that's too 'thick' in my garden. We 'pruners' know that you can't allow plants to overshadow other plants. As you can see from the previous picture, my plants (mostly lillies of various kinds) are getting overcrowded. There needs to be space between plants so they get sunlight and nutrients. BER doesn't understand this concept. He tells me that he thinks everything should butt up against each other so there is no room for weeds.

Funny man.... funny man....

It's not like he's the one out there pulling the weeds. I will NOT let him anywhere NEAR my garden anymore after he thought a newly sprouting poppy plant was a weed. (me thinks this was just a ploy on his part to get out of weeding forever, by the way...)

I'm pretty sure that he'll be keeping a watchful eye on me when I go for another round of hedge trimming out front. Last year looked pretty hideous after I finished, but it all grew back JUST FINE. Now I just need to even it all up a "titch".

I think I'll suggest that BER goes golfing or something to keep us out of harms way.

By 'harms way' I mean harm to me. I'm fairly certain that he'll want to bop me a good one once I'm through pruning.