Jun 15, 2011 4 min read

I’m running out of places to hide the tools.

With such a wet spring, the trees, shrubs, etc., in our yard have burgeoned into wild-looking things one might be more likely to find in an ancient North American forest.

To say they are healthy and growing like crazy would be an understatement.

However, when this happens, and after anything that blooms is done blooming, my lovely wife decides it’s time to trim.

She loves to hack away at the growth around our yard, justifying the necessity of it that we have to do this to keep our home from looking like a jungle.

She has been like this as long as I have known her.

Why should it bother me that she likes to prune our trees and shrubs? Most men would think, “Well, at least I don’t have to do it.”

That’s not the point. While my wife has no trouble dismembering every tree, shrub, bush and plant in sight, she leaves the cleanup for me. She feels that’s fair. I suppose it is. But when we lived in the mountains, it wasn’t a big problem. I’d just drag it all into a heap and burn it.

It’s different in town. We aren’t allowed to burn but instead have to bundle.

Limbs and other large stuff have to be kept to no more than about three feet in length and must be tied in a packet for ease of pickup. Smaller stuff like leaves, vines, etc., has to be bagged like garbage.

That is probably one of the most negative things I have found so far about living in the city (high taxes tops that list). Packing up lawn refuse like it is some kind of gift or prize makes little sense to me. Burning gets rid of it quickly and efficiently.

“Well, what if everyone was allowed to burn brush?” my wife admonished. “Just think how that would be.”

She’s right. But it doesn’t make it any easier on my low back having to repeatedly bend over to sort the brush into its respective piles, stuff some of it into a garbage bag and chop other parts of the mess into appropriate pickup lengths.

Several years ago I decided to nip this in the bud (I couldn’t resist that pun) and took action.

I started hiding anything she could use to clip, cut, pare or dissect, reasoning that if she didn’t have anything to cut with, she couldn’t chop anything back almost to the point of extinction.

Every so often she would ask if I knew where the clippers were. “No, I think you had them last,” I’d reply.

Anyway, after a while, I’d forget where I had hidden them.

But last week, she outfoxed me. She purchased a new set of pruners (one more thing I’ll have to make mysteriously disappear).

Then she went to work on a red bud tree that was sending branches out in every direction and a large rhododendron bush in front of our home.

She did this when I wasn’t home, of course. When I arrived, I immediately saw the piles of debris littering the lawn.

“I see you have been at it again,” I said dryly.

“Well, it has to be done,” she said.

With the temperature and humidity in the 90s, all I could see was personal pain and suffering in my future. Fortunately, we got a respite from the hot, muggy weather and I managed to get everything cleaned up with a minimum of aches and pains. After depositing three large garbage bags full of clippings and a pile of branches on the curb, I was determined to find her new shears and make them vanish.

But I looked and looked and searched and searched to no avail.

Those new shears were no where to be seen.

You don’t suppose she’s hiding them from me, do you?

I mean, that wouldn’t be fair at all, would it?

Have a good day.

James Pletcher Jr. is Herald-Standard.com business editor. He can be reached at 724-439-7571 or by email at jpletcher@heraldstandard.com.