Let's talk about.

First, a couple cool new shots of my dogs:

If you don’t think those are great shots, rather than quick shots I grabbed just for this blog, you are from outer space. I’ll make them black and white. Then you’ll think they’re art. And you’ll feel terrible because dogs are awesome no matter what but you thought, ‘Man, those shots are trash and you know it.’

I wish my dogs could guilt you into helping me with my forest of a lawn.

Today, my best friend and I laid out our plan of attack. We would start with the gigantic rose bush that’s stretching past the second floor. That thing, I said, needs to be cut down below the fence line, and he agreed. OK. Next thing would be the two or three bushes filling out the rest of the fence line. I think there’s a barberry in there. I don’t know. But Andre the Giant (RIP) would be the only person who could trim those from the top these days. We’ll have to chainsaw those down starting in the middle. Sure.

Next we planned to stop for a bit and cut down the cuttings so they’ll fit in those infuriating paper lawn bags. No, Home Depot, a four-foot paper tube is not how doers get more done. The only way I can open one of those bags is by shimmying into it with my little lady body, then gently punching outward with my little lady fists.

After all that, we were planning to throw down some mulch four, five months later than everyone else on earth with a yard. We figured all this would take, about an hour.

We both promptly handed in anything resembling a project management credential because just that rose bush took an hour and 30 minutes cut to the fence line — not even below it! — then cut down the cuttings only to fill up 10 of those fucking paper bags. Ten!

In some parts of the bush were these extra-rough branches that kept repelling the chainsaw. On them were so many thorns. So, so many thorns. Like a regular set of thorns, whatever that is, times infinity. And these branches were so clenched in their muscularity that they curled in on themselves, with narrow leaves like villainous eyebrows sprouting out — somehow — between the dense thorns.

Most rational people would think, “Huh. Some kind of disease,” and move on. Instead, I’m certain this is the Bruce Banner of plants and he’s had some days. Maybe I wasn’t home.

The really funny part about this adventure today is that I recall, and don’t ask me how, planting that rose bush when it was tiny and I was drunk. Truly drunk. Had I just knocked back, in an instant, half a hipper of Skol? Had I been wobbly all day, in between four-hour, passed-out naps? All of the above?

In hindsight, I don’t even remember how I stayed upright. Curiously, I distinctly remember wondering that then, proud that I’d shoved that thing cock-eyed into the almost pure clay next to the house. The drinking was a problem then, some 20 years ago. It’s not now. Amazing what you do and do not remember.

Today, I will remember everything. Like, how I kind of wish the rose bush was still as huge as it was, with its Bruce Banner heart beating inside, because it hid a shit of a porch banister for obviously years. Now the world can see, if it cares to look, a banister with a bit of twist and chipped burnt-siena paint, all held together, barely, with the nails of apathy and avoidance.

That bill’s not due yet, though. We’re going to straighten it out, ‘temporarily,’ with some angle brackets and paint. Because there’s way, way more swearing to be done in the rest of the yard.