Thursday, March 28, 2024

Now it’s the battle of the brush

From my battle of the socks to my latest skir- mish with the brush in
the yard, my summer has been filled with drama of all kinds. Life is relent- less. The more I try to duck the battles, the worse they hit me.

Take my latest battle, for example. Mowing my yard became an obstacle course earlier this summer as

I was dodging all kinds
of hanging branches and
brush from the trees in my yard. It seemed like I couldn’t go three feet without whacking my head against branches or nearly poking out my eyeballs. It was the invasion of the brush, and I was losing the battle.

After realizing I couldn’t with- stand the pressure of being beaten by sticks, branches, twigs, brush and who knows what else, I got clev- er and grabbed my handy brush cut- ter and went on a rampage around my yard.

One after another, I clipped the low-hanging branches on every tree in the yard. I have about 20 trees. Before long, I had quite the moun- tain of branches growing in vari- ous piles around the yard. I even

attracted the attention of my neighbor who came over wondering what on world I was up to. “Just getting even in the battle of the brush,” I muttered out loud.

It seemed like I was taking my aggression out on the brush through the means of the clipper. I was having a fun time knock- ing them off one by one. Then came the clean up.

“Do I hear any vol- unteers?” I shouted across the

neighborhood. Of course, nobody responded, and I was left to clean up the mess on my own.

I collected enough brush to ignite a bonfire that would likely be seen for hundreds of miles. I’m thinking at least to Mount Rushmore. Living in the city, I knew that wouldn’t be an option. The next best thing is to pile it up for the garbage hauler.

The next day I found a nasty note taped to my garbage can: “Can’t take this, you need to break it down into smaller chunks.”

So I grabbed my clipper once again and began cutting it up into 4-foot chunks, which is what the note from the garbage hauler sug-

gested. It’s not so easy when there are branches going in every direc- tion, but I did the best I could and made the pile much more manage- able. Or so I thought.

I left about a dozen yard bags of brush for the garbage hauler for the next week. Once again, same result. Nasty note: “You’re a fool, we can’t take this, cut it into 2-foot chunks and tie it all together with twine into 3-foot bundles.”
“You have got to be kidding me,”
I disgustedly ranted around the house saying. It’ll take me the rest of the year to break all this down into what they’re requesting. They would have been better off just telling me, “You’re a crazy man, we can’t take your brush.”

I now have piles of brush stashed along the side of the house waiting for proper burial. I’m waiting for a friend to return from vacation so I can borrow his pick-up and dispose of the yard waste myself. I can’t figure out why nobody wants my brush.

It’s just another one of the battles I’m facing this summer. There is nothing better than going in hot pursuit of trying to stay on top of losing battles from all sorts of direc- tions.

 

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