As I was getting ready to leave the house yesterday morning, I heard the trimmer's motor out front, and thought I'd spotted Andrew lurking in the shrubbery in front of the porch. Oh-ho, thought I, perfect timing - I can write up his Christmas card and deliver it to him in person. Except when I went outside, it wasn't Andrew, it was yet another of his compatriots, an older man I'd not seen here before. "Are you with Andrew?" I asked, stupidly, because why would anybody else waltz into my garden and start tidying? In broken English, he explained that Andrew had dropped him off here to do some cleaning, and would be back to pick him up later in the afternoon. "Wow," I laughed. "He's leaving you here for the whole day?!"
So I left the card for Andrew on the mailbox and went off to work, and forgot about it.
I got home after dark and went straight into the house, where I was met by a wide-eyed geek. "Some guy came and cut everything down!" "Sure," says I, "that was Andrew's sidekick, come to do the garden cleanup." "But he cut everything down!"
OK, this was really something. For the geek to even notice that anything had changed in the jardin was highly unusual. So I braced myself for the morning's revelations.
 |
| "Holy shit! Where did it all go?" |
Wow!
He really did cut everything down! I was gobsmacked - never seen anything like it!
It's actually really fascinating to see the bones of spaces so clearly. Here's the front border, with camera pointed right at where the goldenrod was in all its glory in October:
And here's the Christmassy yew, still all neatly trimmed from an earlier Polish cleanup:
(Bit blurry, light was getting low.)
Mum's spring training this year is going to be a very different experience from previous years, that's for sure. Watch out, weeds, we can see you now!
Merry Christmas!
1 comment:
From Mum:
"The cleanup is an OMG for sure. Very funny your story about Daniel's reaction. In fact the whole thing is a great piece of writing. You might want to have some conversation with Andrew about his crony though. From what I can see in the pics the guy cut down to bare ground which leaves nothing to protect and hold the topsoil through the winter freeze/thaw except the root systems underneath. Leaving the 2-3 inches of dead stems from the perennials holds soil and reminds you where they are. I'm sure he was just being super efficient but it looks like too much of a good thing. It may also be a lesson on the soullessness of machinery. You're right about really seeing the shapes of the spaces though."
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