Hacking back the jungle

I'm fortunate to live in a neighborhood where no one's starving, no one is unemployed (at least involuntarily), and no one is on any form of public assistance.  In other ways, however, we're a mixed bag.  Especially with regard to our approaches to yardwork.

A few of my neighbors have so little interest in their yards that they appear to be living on a farm.  Quite a few others pay for regular yardwork service that maintains their yards in beautiful condition.  But a majority of my neighbors seem to consider working in their yards a hobby, a hobby that consumes a large portion of their spare time.  Not just lawn mowing.  I mean continual edging and pruning and trimming and planting and fertilizing ... well, you get the picture.

And then there's me.  I subscribe to a philosophy that might be called "Biennial Rescue."  I mow the lawn, of course, although not as fanatically often as others, and that's pretty much it.  I may clip back shrubs that are keeping my car from driving safely into the driveway, ok?  

But this is the Pacific Northwest, and nature uncontrolled eventually becomes nature tyrannical.  After two years of benign neglect, I find my house disappearing into the foliage.  I discover that the width of my front walk has been reduced 75 percent by aggressive ivy growth.  That my living room has been darkened by ivy growing across the windows.  That I have trouble moving from one portion of my yard to another because of overgrown shrubbery.  

I have a hedge that has grown so high as to cast a neighbor's back yard in shadow, resulting in a certain genial neighborly friction.

But why go on?  At that two-year benchmark, despair overpowers inertia.  I finally make that call to a landscaper.

And so yesterday, the crew arrived and spent all day doing what had to be done.  As I mentioned on Facebook, the day after they do what they do, I'm always reminded of my mother's reaction when my brother and I returned from the barber after the first haircut of summer -- our long awaited "crew cut."  She didn't weep.  She just sighed with sadness and resignation.  But she knew it would all grow back.

And so I stare at my house, especially the front, devoid of all the jungle-like growth that I both loved and hated, and that provided recreational opportunities for my two cats.  The trees and large bushes are still there, although trimmed back.  But all the wild growth -- weeds, one might call them, although somewhat attractive weeds -- are gone and bare earth has been exposed for the first time in 24 months.  I sigh.  But, like my childhood hair, it will all grow back.

And then the presentation of the bill.  The price of procrastination and of refusal to do the work myself is high.  Am I being cheated?  Who knows?  I'm too lazy to solicit bids for an occasional day of yardwork.  And it's only once every two years.

I can almost hear the little invasive plants stirring and beginning to grow back.

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The photo is a stock photo, and exaggerates my own problem.  But you get the idea..