Easter | The Odd and Unmentionable

In honor of Easter I’m following a Let There Be Light! theme in today’s post.

The first miracle? Sunlight now penetrates into areas of the property that haven’t seen it in over a decade (some of which probably still shouldn’t…oops) because last Saturday we rented a tree pruner and got totally carried away. The loss of restraint may have been due to simple gloom-fatigue, but more likely it was because of the totally bitchen miniature chainsaw (seriously!! a tiny chainsaw!!) strapped to the end of a long pole that could reach anywhere. Anywhere.

It was heady stuff. Who knew that even itty bitty chainsaws can grant that level of intoxicating power? The chore quickly turned into a kind of pruning Bacchanal, except no wine or naked women. I believe we cut something off pretty much anything taller than four feet. Redbuds, catalpas, blue spruce, photinias, apple and maple and peach, and then there was the mugo pine. (God? Please help the mugo pine. We didn’t mean to hurt it like that and we’re really, really sorry.) The little Stihl Beast cut through tree trunks like butter, apple wood like soft pine, and soft pine like a it was a down pillow exploding, only with wood chips instead of feathers.

We just couldn’t seem to stop.

(The mugo pine; going from five trunks down to two)

The bad news is we have to wait for the trees to leaf out to learn who survived and who didn’t. But the good news is twofold: 1) The sun will shine on our happy home once more so I should be able to get a decent crop of vegetables again;

(Sugar peas and arugula seedlings: note the elegantly arranged chicken wire to keep out the hostiles)

…and 2) the drastic pruning created all kinds of carnage for the squirrel interstate highway system around and over the garden so maybe Dane the mangy rescue mutt will finally be able to catch a couple of them in his powerful, crunching jaws. (As I mentioned before here, I currently feel no charity towards them. None. They declared war on me, so I will despise them and wish every conceivable kind of harm on the twitching rodent horrors until our usual winter’s truce returns.)

In the meantime I have a lot of debris to clean up. Because of time constraints and back pain we hauled anything that fell over into neighbors’ yards, to the dump. Then we piled the rest into three (big!) piles: one on the driveway, one under what’s left of the mugo pine in the corner, and one in the middle of the lawn. Why? Because in spite of the fact that the hubster leans toward hauling the rest of it to the landfill as well, I’m hell bent and determined to chop it all up and use it for kindling and firewood in the wood stove next winter.

Why am I hell bent? I don’t know. I just have to. It’s one of those things.

So five days later I’m about two thirds of the way through the first pile on the lawn. The hubster is twitching a little himself as he worries about the grass slowly dying underneath, but still refrains from pressuring me. (Saint Hubster: patron saint of obsessive compulsives.)

I’m doing it all with hand pruners and loppers, cutting each individual piece to sixteen inches or less. (Again…I don’t know why.) I’m piling everything against the back fence where it can dry out in the hot, summer, high desert sun so as to readily ignite come next November.

(Looks like salad, no?)

But enough of that. Now, on to the second miracle. In spite of last weekend’s widespread destruction, we still managed to preserve and protect the perennial gifts of hope, rebirth, and new life (thereby following a loose Easter theme), that Spring has brought back to the garden this year. Here are a couple things I found blooming around the garden this morning:

(rain drops on bleeding heart)