Defeat of the Shrub

[primsong]

Spent a good part of yesterday going out on a regular basis to hack at a large dead azalea thing that's as tall as myself, hacking away it's limbs (Arrrr!) and then gradually digging out the root ball (pant, grumble, mutter). Clipped, lopped and chopped off all the roots I could reach, dug and dug and chopped again then soaked the thing with a hose to try to soften it up. The end result looked rather like a meteorite had landed in my yard and inexplicably left a dead shrub in the center of its crater....which then filled with brown goo.

So I'm out there kneeling in the mud poking around in this brown gloppy soup with my loppers, lopping anything I can find by feel and finally got to where the blamed thing would rock back and forth ("schlupp...schluuup...schlupp..."). Stand up, get a good grip on the dead limb-stubs and pull only to be reminded of how bluebells post-blooming invariably turn into bluebell-slime when trod upon, sending me skidding along like a beserk slime-skater hanging onto a wobbly dead shrub. ("Yeeeaaa!") Did I mention this is on a slope?

"Schlooooop....SCHLUP!" At last! At last! The beast is slain! I am Triumphant Gardener!

My daughter, returning from school, comes up the driveway and stops to raise her eyebrows at me. "Shrub!" I offer by way of explanation for my mud-and-green-slimed self. "I conquered it!" I hold up the dripping rootball like the head of some dragon of old.

"Yeah. So I see!" she says and heads into the house with that 'crazy gardener mom at it again' look. My son comes out and says "Wow. How heavy is that thing? Can I carry it?"

No, gardening is not for the meek.

Comments

[estellye.livejournal.com]

hehehe! What a picture! I can just hear you saying "Shrub!" as if that explains everything...which oddly it does. That is going to be good for hilarity for pretty much ever. The next time I hear the word shrub I do hope I am not in public, lol.

[thisbluespirit]

Do you need UNIT? These surely can't be natural!!

[thisbluespirit]

I'm sorry, Brig/Liz keeps slipping in when I try to use my Brigadier icon. I don't know what's the matter with them...

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Tsk, tsk... you just can't keep those two apart, can you? ;-)

You just know there's bound to be a drabble involving UNIT and shrubs somewhere in all this.

[thisbluespirit]

It did occur to me. But then you mentioned rhubarb a while back and that did. I seem to be stuck in permanant Who plot-bunny mode.

[ravenskyewalker.livejournal.com]

hee! This is a great story. "Shrub! I conquered it!" LOL

No, gardening is not for the meek.

True. However, my fiercest gardening experience lately was having to climb a slope to go at ivy with clippers and yank it down from a tree it was climbing (and growing into) in earnest. It looks as if I still have some more of that to do, but I don't like that slope... and ivy needs to be removed from some other trees, too. Sigh... Still! The sense of accomplishment if I succeed will be worth it! It will be conquered! ;-)

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Ivy! O, Brave Gardener to take on ivy - my uncle had to get a bunch out of some trees and he just cut all the stems near the ground then let them die for a year before yanking all the dead stuff down out of the branches. It mostly worked, though it does mean everything looks like heck for a year. Good luck!

[infiniteviking]

Kai the gardener? *grins*

[earlybird7.livejournal.com]

i am trying to centralize myself to one specific place. i have three blogging type sites that i rarely post on at all so of late i have been slowly gathering the posts that are worth holding onto, you know, the ones where i actually say something that means anything.

i admire the way that you keep it together with the journal here and the lotr site as well. you inspired me to centralize myself. the only message boards i hung onto, because lordy i had membership upwards to tem and cancelled all but yours, theodens and one other. the blogging sites i have to centralize as well since i have about three and then i am a member of facebook, though that isn't anything a blogging type site.

i miss coming around and reading your stuff and seeing your garden pics and such. i hope i get my head on straight enough that all that gets orgged (short for organized and staying that way). ;-)

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Orgged? :-D I wonder if you could sell t-shirts that say something like that... "Got Org?"

I *so* know what you mean - I let go of several sites I was dabbling around in because I found myself using up my comp time just leaping from post to post like a demented farmer checking the fences. I've been pressured several times to join Facebook, but between my concerns about their use of personal info and the sheer time it takes to keep up with yet *another* group of people I've decided not to.

The result is being able to spend more time just writing and only post now and then, which seems to be better. It's hard though... I am contemplating going back and picking up my activity in a gardening forum again just because they're on the same wavelength with that part of my life and understand the trauma of bad soil or *gasp* withered buds. :-)

Best of luck with your careful pruning - remember, pruning brings out thicker leaves!

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

*giggling madly*

Somehow, this reminds me of the climax of The Shining Furrow, with Three wading around in the muddy fractal-crater.

It also reminds me of a shrub we battled a few years back - a juniper, I think. It took four females of varying size and strength, plus several shovels and a reciprocating saw, two or three hours to get it out. I wound up digging all around and underneath it with the chugging saw while my massively strong sisters tugged and pulled.

That was FUN. :D

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, juniper! Our previous house had huge, overgrown junipers all along the walk leading up to the front door that were maybe 5-6 ft. high, it was like navigating a prickly tunnel. One of the first things we did was cut them back as best we could and then yanked them all straight out of the ground with the help of a friend's pickup truck. The ground there was permanently filled with a fibrous network of old juniper roots, I had to build up new soil over it to even plant color-spots. Go you on getting rid of one of those monsters! What did you put in its place?

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

Sheet plastic, gravel and drainage tile. It was right next to the house and doing Evil Things to the foundation. We have enough trouble with water in the basement, since our garage is oh-so-considerately situated under our house!

(Someday, if I'm unlucky, I'm going to get struck by lightning while clearing out the driveway drain during a massive thunderstorm to prevent our garage from flooding. It's our main woodworking storage area, so that's kind of an essential job, and everyone else has the sense not to volunteer... I like storms.)