There is a shrub in our back yard, the name of which I know not, that has beautiful white flowers in the spring. Before you start: no, it’s not a Dogwood, or a Lilac, or an Azalea or Rhododendron. I don’t know what it is.
Dammit, Jim, I’m a gardener, not a Botanical encyclopedia!
Sure I could look it up, and act like I know what it is, and lie to you about it, and feel smug in my know-it-all-ness, but frankly, I’m way too lazy for all that.
And that is not what I wanted to talk about anyways.
You see, this shrub, while beautiful, tends to get a little bit ‘too…Too‘, if you know what I mean. It overpowers my hosta/fern/lily of the valley bed, and I just can’t have that. So each spring after it blooms, I trim it.
And by trim it, I mean hack it to a shell of its former self.
And it feels good.
Oh, sure, I always START with the artistic frame of mind, snipping here and there, stepping back, getting bearing on my next cuts and all. But inevitably I end up getting into a cutting frenzy the likes of which only Edward Scissorhands can empathize.
Snipping becomes Lopping. The ‘stepping back and take a look to see how it’s shaping up’ thing turns into turbo-shearing.
It’s intense, man.
I couldn’t really tell you what goes through my mind during one of these pruning sessions. All I know is that afterwards, I feel light and happy. Like a load has been lifted.
The shrub looks like hell, but a load has been lifted.
I wonder if giving a hair cut feels the same way? I’d love to experiment on that. I wonder if my family would let me try it on them?
I doubt it. There is a shocking lack of trust in this family when it comes to Mama yielding scissors. All because once….ONCE!… I may have accidentally messed up helping My Captain cut his hair so badly he had to shave his whole head to fix it.
What? It happens.
Geesh.
Looks like it’s gonna be just me and the shrubs.
Mama Boe 
awww…i was hoping to see a picture of your finsihed project!
I don’t know the names of plants either. The lawn is green (ok, some of it has yellow flowers), The shrubs are growing. Who cares what their name is. They probably don’t care what my name is either.
I have a reputation — of butchering the Azaleas in our front yard. My response is (the same as when I, in my opinion, get a bad hair cut) no worries, it grows back.