Better Gardening with Tools

 Jennilyn is away at her Sister's, watching the kids while Lu and Bob are traveling.  I have a habit I've tried to sporadically cultivate over the years of undertaking some ridiculous project while Jenni's away; I want her return home to be something of a wooing venture.

In the past, the projects have included ripping out an entry closet, building shelves into rooms,cleaning out the garage.

This year, she's told me several times about wanting to get rid of several bushes in our front yard.  I always fuss at Jenni when she goes after large plants without me home.  She used garden shears in the past to try and take off limbs, rather than the lop shears.

This is a pair of garden shears

See the hook? For lopping off things!

She makes fun of me for knowing the difference.  But seriously, have you ever tried to saw at a piece of wood with a pair of scissors?  I admire her vigor, but worry about blisters!

So I applied myself in a vigorous fashion, in honor of how hard my wife works at things. I lopped with great vigor, soon exposing the center of the bush.  But I quickly reached a point where I couldn't get the lop shear hook around the central limbs, there were too many intervening scraggly twigs.

I retreated to the garage (which is still pretty clean from the last out-of-town trip Jennilyn took!) and considered what else I had that could take out thick limbs with limited access.

And I beheld my shelf of power tools!

 Sawzall!  Is there any one of life problems you can't solve?

As I removed great sections of this offending plant, I found that several vines of honeysuckle were strangling the other bushes that we wanted to keep.  I gathered great armfuls of vines, and trudged away from the house, pulling vines off of the bushes and out of the ground as I went.

I reached a point where I had pulled about fifteen feet of vines out, but their collective grip on the bushes they'd infiltrated made it impossible for me to pull them any further.  But that's OK, I had a horsepower solution to this plant-related problem.

I shut the vines in the back door of our van, and drove away. Nearly forty feet of honeysuckle are no match for my small-block Ford V-8!

Take that, invasive vines!

Once I was done, I stopped to review my work.  The gap where a huge bush was now vacant made me happy.

And I was at once paralyzed with the a ridiculous fear; what if I cut out the wrong bush?!  I knew there some Jenni wanted to keep.

 So I spoiled the surprise and texted her a photo.

*whew* I got the right plant.

The two blades on the left are the ones I used this morning.  If you look close, you can see the teeth on the blades are worn completely flat.  It was worth getting that thing down to ruin them!  I had to run to Home Depot for a A/C filter anyway, so I picked up a new package of wood blades, one pictured on the left, the model is appropriately called, "The Ax."

There are two bushes left out front that have to come down, after all.