This morning I awoke at 6:15. I wouldn’t ordinarily wake up at such an unnatural hour, but the dogs woke up and decided it was time to go outside for a potty break. Somehow over the years they’ve been trained to get up at around 6:00 a.m. to go outside. Not sure how that happened. Certainly they didn’t learn such behavior from me.
Anyway, I rolled out of bed and let them do their thing outside while I made me some coffee. I sat in a quiet nook in the house and played on my laptop for awhile until the rest of the house was awake. I made breakfast (eggs, sausage, and rice) and then went outside to get busy with the yardwork. By this time it was 9:00.
Another common theme you’ll notice in these blogs of mine is the fact that I hate yardwork. I’m not one of those people that will let it go until I get nasty letters from the homeowner’s association, but I begrudge every moment I spend outside trying to tame the untamable elements. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I’d much prefer to live in a high-rise penthouse where lawn care consists of watering the potted fichus trees in the entryway. Unfortunately, I was born in the wrong economic bracket and so far have only managed to claw my way to upper middle class. We here in the UMC have houses in the suburbs with the requisite lawns. Most male suburbanites like to get into competitions with their neighbors for the best lawn on the block. I’m not one of those people. I do enough yardwork to get by, but odds of me getting to put the “Lawn of the Month” sign in my yard are pretty slim. In fact, the odds makers are not even making odds that it will happen.
So, the fact that I was outside by 9:00 a.m. and in the process of mowing the lawn was a small personal victory, much like a child who manages to take a few timid bites of broccoli. Now, when I do finally manage to encourage myself to get out and do yardwork, I am no slacker. I don’t do it slapdash or half-heartedly. I put my all into it. Being borderline OCD compels me to do a good job. But it is a hollow victory. I should feel good about it, but I don’t. A child is not proud of himself for eating broccoli, he’s just happy that it’s over.
As if hating to do yardwork was not bad enough, doing yardwork in Texas provides additional punishment in the form of oppressive heat and humidity. And this morning, Texas outdid itself. The temperature quickly climbed into the 90s and, thanks to the rains yesterday, the humidity was near 100%. One can’t work in those conditions for very long without risking dehydrations. I kept myself well hydrated with some iced tea I’d made the night before, but the best one can do when working in near-100 degree weather is to merely postpone the point of heatstroke.
So, I did the normal things (mowed, edged, swept), but then I also got a wild hare and decided to trim up all the bushes in the front yard. They’ve needed it for a few weeks but my hectic work schedule and the intermittent rains have made me postpone it longer than I intended. So I got out my shears and my branch cutters (all manual … nothing electric for me) and began trimming. I trimmed up the crepe myrtles. I shaped the boxwoods (these in particular are a misnomer in my yard in that they are spherically shaped). I trimmed the pomegranate bush (i.e. I tried to make it look more like a tree than a bush).
And then, perhaps crazed by the sun, I decided to go a little bit further. There are some holly bushes in front of the house that have been large, green (and very prickly) rectangular boxes since I moved into the house. Once in awhile I dutifully clip them back into a box shape when they start looking a little shaggy. But today I thought I’d make them look more tree-like and less shrub-like. For me, this was like a neophyte, amateurish attempt at bonsai or topiary. I could have just plunged into the huge holly bushes with my cutters and sheers and started whacking off all of the lower branches. I did that to a degree, but I also was careful about which branches I whacked. I wanted the effect to be a sort of “floating box”. This I accomplished and was rather proud of the final cut (so to speak), even if I do say so myself. I should have done that years ago. It made the front flower bed look MUCH better.
About midway through my first attempt at holly topiary, the dehydration and heatstroke hit me like a hot frying pan. By this time three hours had gone by. Three hours of sweating profusely, exercising vigorously, and taking the full heat of the sun. When I hit this wall and realized that my day of working in the yard was over, I still had about 30 minutes of clean-up to do. I had to bag all of the clippings and drag all of the cut branches around to the back of the house. I did this, but every step became like a miniature Iditarod. By the time I got everything lugged back to the alleyway, I was a spent force.
I took an cold shower, put on some cool, loose clothes, and collapsed in a heap on the couch. Unfortunately, I can’t stay sitting for too long or my muscles start to seize up. The stiffness creeps into my muscles and joints and getting them unfrozen, while only mildly uncomfortable, has the unfortunate side-effect of making me move like an old man of 90. Worse still, a man of 90 who never particularly took care of himself.
So, I think I will be spending the rest of the day not doing much of anything except trying to stay moving so that the machinery doesn’t freeze up.
June 26, 2010
Somewhere in Texas
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