Saturday, September 9, 2006 (late)
I'll have bruises all over my body tomorrow, I think.
There was a pyracantha bush growing beside the front walk, in front of the door. When Jay and his ex planted it twenty years ago, the plan was to espalier it against the side wall, but they never got around to it. It became a huge shrub. It has nice flowers in the spring, red leaves in the fall, and berries through the winter, but! It grows much too fast, and I just can't keep up with it. It crowds the walk with dangerously thorned twigs, and blocks my view of the drive from the window in the front door. I hate trimming it because the thorns are so bad. Straight, super sharp, and over an inch long. They'll easily go through heavy leather gloves, not to mention shoe soles.
I wasn't sure I was spelling pyracantha correctly, so I Googled it, and found entries like "a lethally thorned bush/shrub/tree thingy", "a load of viciously spiked pyrocanthia [sic]", "a.k.a. Firethorn", and plenty of recommendations for planting it under and around windows to "control access" - "will deter the most determined burglar". So I guess I'm not the only one who noticed the thorns.
This morning, when I realized that if I didn't trim it away from the walk, again, for the third time this year, I'd be open to a negligence suit from some deliveryman, I decided I'd about had it. The shrub was going. Today.
I have several sets of those long-handled loppers - two "scissor-style", and one very large very heavy (too heavy) "anvil-style" with some kind of levery thingy that increases the force. And I set to.
Having done a lot of brush clearing lately, I've developed a system. For branches of about an inch or over, I can't get enough force just pulling the handles together, so I rest one handle against some part of my body (thigh, hip, stomach, shoulder, depending on height) and then use both hands to pull the other handle. It gets the job done, but leaves me with interesting bruises.
Now I've got a 5 foot heap of wilting nastiness on the driveway. Tomorrow I get to move it all to the burn pile. I plan to spread a tarp and rake it onto the tarp, and drag it away, without getting anywhere near the thorns. (It's been my experience that dead thorny things are more vicious than live thorny things.)
I found three old bird nests in the pyracantha. Smart birds. (That makes six nests within eight feet of the front door!)
I'll have to decide what to put there instead. Maybe a few gentle slow-growing azaleas.
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Friday I volunteered at the Maritime Museum again. They put out a yearly "Pilot's Log", 60 or so pages of paid ads from supporting businesses interspersed with a few articles. A few months ago I had scanned in and sized the ads. It has been printed. Yesterday I called about 30 of the 96 supporters to ask how many (free) copies they wanted.
I'll have to go in again sometime next week to make more calls. Then, they have to be delivered. I've volunteered to do that, too. That could almost be fun. I'll get to visit a lot of offices - doctors, lawyers, CPAs, engineers, restaurants, shipyards, marinas ... I'm going to find out more about the county and what's where. It'll be like a combination road rally and scavenger hunt.
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