The Search For Enlightenment

The privet hedge down the left hand side of the cottage garden is becoming a bit of a monster. The garden side was getting far too high to be trimmed without the aid of a safety net and the lane side is more in the domain of steeple jacks.

It had been decided that we would use the hedge trimmer to give it a good haircut and Bumble had already started the job earlier in the week. It had, however, also been decided that we would give ourselves a rest this weekend and do fun things rather than just chores.

So I set to with the trimmer and had finished the job B had started in about an hour. Feeling pretty satisfied with my efforts I was rather dismayed (huge understatement) when I found Bumble talking to Roy, one of the neighbours, about how the hedge had been managed in the past, and how it would be much easier if we were to lop a couple of feet off the top.

I was pretty miffed and made no secret about it. B went into one of her ‘leave it and I’ll do it myself’ moods, which just made me more annoyed. So having delivered a wise instruction to ‘not speak to me’ I got well and truly stuck in with the tree loppers.

I wouldn’t recommend using anger as a way to boost your life-energy, it’s pretty volatile stuff. But by the time we had decimated twenty or so feet of the top of the hedge my mood was much improved and we hadn’t killed each other.

What started off as a one man hedge-mashing exercise turned into a two man (well one woman and one man) project. I burned off all my angst and Bumble forgave me for being less than sociable for the initial half an hour.

Speaking about it later, we decided that the whole incident could have been avoided with a little better communication and we have promised to try to achieve that in the future. Neither the course of true love, nor the path to enlightenment are without their challenges, but having overcome the problem, we are better for the experience, and we have a much more manageable hedge.