Scalped

In the Pacific Northwest, vegetation grows quickly.  Who can blame me for not keeping up with it?

Well, probably my neighbors, although they are too polite to say anything.  I see them out cutting and trimming and mowing constantly, in what seems to be a hobby, a constant frenzy of landscaping.  Or, if they can't bear to do it themselves, as is increasingly true as my neighbors get younger and younger, and more and more affluent, I see their gardening proxies arrive at regular intervals, in old pick-up trucks filled with implements.  These workers, speaking foreign languages, manage to make a full day out of basic landscape management.

I am neither a gardening hobbyist nor a spendthrift.  I also secretly like living ensconced in wilderness within the city.  My taste in landscape design is, as we say, informal.  The gardens of Versailles are fun to look at, but not to live in.

And yet, even I have my limits.  I can go two years, and usually do, with no attention to my yard beyond mowing the lawn.  But, as I say, in the Northwest Corner vegetation flourishes.  Even effloresces.  Takes over.  Overwhelms.

Even I prefer that portions of my house be visible from the street in front.

And so, about every second year, I reluctantly call a local gardener, or landscaper, or handyman, or whoever has recently sent me a brochure.  I show him what needs to be done.  He usually is polite and non-censorious.  He gives me an outrageous estimate.  I assume it's outrageous when I calculate it out to hourly wages for himself and his young assistant (who may actually be his son).  But I've been asked for more or less the same amount by other professionals in other years..

I call them "professionals," because their effective billing rate is about the same as that of many struggling attorneys.

They perform for a full day with various noisy tools, and at the end of the day my yard appears barren.  Like new construction for which landscaping has not yet been installed.  I cry a bit for the rich greenness that's been stripped away.  But at least I can now enter my front door without struggling past predatory vines wrapping themselves around my arms and legs and attempting to drag me deep into the steaming jungle.

And I know it will all grow back.  Before I know it.

It reminds me of childhood summers, when I'd go to the barber and ask for a crew cut.  The barbers hated crew cuts, but I'd insist, "Cut it off.  Cut it all off."  I'd go home, and my mother would gasp and get misty eyed for a moment, but then we'd all get used to it.  It grew back.  It took much of the summer, but it grew back.  And by the time school began, I'd once more have to anoint my hair with whatever greasy product we used in those days, and comb it back off of my face.

And thus will it be with my yard.