This year it began with one of those folksy, hand-lettered signs taped to the door of a hardware store. “Time for pruning,” it cheerfully suggested.

“Yeah,” said a peppy but nondescript voice inside my head, matching the note’s neighborly tone. “sounds like a good idea, don’t you think?”

“All right” laughed another voice from deeper within, sounding a little like Rush Limbaugh or one of those chubby profane FM disc jockeys.

See it usually starts just this way – simply and innocently. I see a promotion for tools or hear a gardening guru’s broadcast suggestion or                   I spot trimming activity by one of our retired neighbors, incessant in their preventative maintenance, who I watch for signs about what I’m supposed to be doing around my house – or what I should be feeling guilty aboout not doing.

Then that first voice, the same one who suggests that I brush my teeth for the full two minutes and recycle that gooey old ketchup bottle someone stuffed into the trash, points out that hacking back trees and bushes is a good and necessary thing, and suggests that even I can do it. The second voice, the Limbaugh one, just chuckles.

The stage is set, and on one of those energizing blue-sky, crunchy and clear autumn days, I whistle into our shed, fueled by an abundance of that wholesome energy that home maintenance sometimes provides.  And I step out slightly altered– armed with clippers and snippers and saws. The foliage in our yard lets out a low moan.

Those closest to me also sense something is wrong. When I hint at my intentions, my wife winces, then begins to talk to our kids about going to the mall or a pumpkin festival somewhere. “What’s daddy going to do,” my daughter asks as my wife whisks them off, like Donna Reed trying to soothe the Bailey children and protect them from a half-cocked Jimmy Stewart.

Oh come on, I sniffle to myself. It’s not that bad.

But it is. There are reminders everywhere from pruning seasons gone by: the shrubs with gaping wounds, the trees with awkwardly conspicuous stubs where limbs once grew, and the bushes tilting and swaying in deadly still air.  Oddly-shaped foliage. Cloning gone bad. Disney World meets Dali.

But I can’t see that now. This clean and neat motivation for such trimming is still humming about in my head. There is something cleansing about it all, like finally freeing that tooth-trapped popcorn husk or unloading a lot of stuff at a yard sale.  Judicious pruning will,  I recite to myself, let the tree breathe, bring on healthy new limbs, brighten the yard, improve the lawn and entirely justify a couple of beers and bucketloads of salty snacks afterwards, with my butt firmly planted in front of a football game.

This is good old healthy homeowning stuff. What could be better. What is everyone so worried about.

I hear Rush humming along cheerfully, probably steeped in the process of gagging and tying up the other guy in my head.

 

I begin with a light touch — just a trim, I’m careful and controlled.

But something changes. Where a little is good, when I am transformed this way, a whole lot more seems a whole lot better. There is no feel for just how much space one skinny little branch occupies; no awareness that I’ve slipped into a never-ending cycle of making correction upon correction with snip after snip and slice after slice after slice.

“You don’t want to have to bring out all these tools again,” the deep voice says. “Get the job done right the first time.”

“Knock some off over there,” it says. “Now, quick. Over here.”

“This damn bush is out of control.  You better teach it a lesson now.”

“It’ll grow back. Don’t worry. “

This season my neighbor Chris, unwittingly offered me an even more deadly device, which allows trimming of highest branches. It has poles that extend to the stratosphere, a saw at the tip and an efficient clipping device operated by a rope. “All right!” I heard someone say.

This tool made an overgrown crab apple tree my first victim. I began trimming a myriad of little branches that had sprouted from it, but the more I cut, the more I cut. “Go, man, go” is all I heard.  Before long, what remained was a twisted, scarred trunk with four or five small branches unnaturally sticking from it, like someone had glued arms willy-nilly to the Venus de Milo.

.Then, inexplicably, I cut off the branches and left the trunk: a living tree one minute,  a utility pole the next.

A Lilac bush followed and was nearly exterminated. Then I scarred a young Redbud tree and awkwardly altered a soaring Linden and thinned a failing Dogwood, pushing it closer to death.  The voice chanted my name over and over. Anything green and vertical was snipped at a bit. And a bit more. And a bit over here. And a bit there. And a bit over here again

Chris paid a visit. “Do think you are getting carried away?” he asked, sounding a bit like the gun shop owner talking on the megaphone to the recent customer who’s holed up in he 7-11 with eight hostages.

“No it’s fine,” I responded, only half conscious that our lawn was ankle deep now in green appendages

Then my family returned. My wife looked at he crab apple tree, rolled her eyes and headed into the house. My kids examined the limb-covered ground somberly . “Why did you kill so many trees,” my daughter asked.

“I didn’t kill anything,” I mutter absently. “This is a good thing for our yard. Now go in the house.”

But she has freed the first voice. “Oh, no. Not again. What have you done,” it said.

“Just some pruning, my friend.” came a response. “Just some pruning.”