Pruning the Pyracantha

I met Roberta last winter over knitting. She walked right up to me at Cafe Carolina and asked about the poncho I was wearing. It was to be only the first of many things we discovered in common; and talking to strangers only the beginning of my admiration of her. One morning I shared my blogging and we further bonded around creative gardening. On a sunny Saturday last spring we exchanged garden tours. She toured mine, then I followed her to hers, where we had wine on the beautiful porch of her lime green outbuilding. Roberta loved my garden door and got her husband to put up a wooden screen door in a frame sitting right in the middle of her back gardens. She planted vines on the trellis on either side of it. It is crazy fabulous. I got excited by the flowers she painted on the glass in window frames hanging on her fence and tried my hand at it for my fence--with results that surprised and pleased me. Roberta is a decade and change beyond me in years and my new idol. She took up painting when she was no longer young, and gardening, and house-renovating with Allen. She had been a crocheter, but had just delved into knitting when we met. She loves my writing, I love her painting. We love each other.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I return to see her receding summer garden and we sit on her front patio before the warmth of a chiminea, drinking wine and watching blue birds and jays as the evening approaches. I admire the pyracantha trained to follow the contours of a low wrought iron fence around the stone patio. The prickly pyracantha tree in my side garden is the bane of my existence. I have to trim the top through the dining room window, and it sprouts suckers pretty much daily.  But I love the winter berries, and the texture it gives the garden, so I endure it. I comment on the artful way hers looks, and lament the raggedness of mine. Roberta says, "Cut it back! Cut it back as far as you need to so you can reach it and control it." Huh. What a concept.

A few days later I pull into the driveway and sit looking down the garden at the wicked thing. I notice that it has only a few bunches of berries up near the top, amongst the overgrowth I am trying to pretend isn't there--it is begging for an overhaul. Then I see it--the line along which it needs to be cut into a new shape. I am not a sculptor or a wood carver, but I have often heard keepers of those gifts say that they sit with the stone or the wood until it speaks to them. It is the medium that tells them where to cut to make it what it is meant to be, they do not force it into their own vision. That prickly pyracantha was speaking to me. It was showing me what it needed to be better looking, healthier, and more manageable.

Last weekend I gather my long sleeves, my leather gloves, and my loppers and set to pruning. I work slowly, one clip at a time. I step back several times to re-engage with what it is telling me. I fine tune the lopper cuts with my clippers. I am so pleased with the result. I can see over it from the window now, instead of into it. And I can see the top of my lime green door when I pull into the driveway. Hopefully some day it will again be full of berries for the birds to eat, that will encourage blooms followed by more berries.

The pyracantha had become shapeless as it grew helter skelter and as I lopped it off in the same haphazard way. It was out of control and I was overwhelmed by it. This is not the first time I have pruned the heck out of it. When I created the side garden, I observed that the long-ignored suckers had woven themselves into the branches and choked it all up. It was as dense as the rose bushes around Sleeping Beauty's castle tower. And it was entangled with a nandina growing right along with it through its core. I did not study it first, I just took off with my little saw and loppers. I cut the sides, I cut the lower branches so I could plant under it; it never occurred to me that it was acceptable gardening practice to cut the top off. In my haste I cut one of three main trunks and left a hole in the back side. It never recovered. In fact, this week as I am pruning, I pull the rotted remains of that bone out of the ground.

Dreams can be like the pyracantha, at least for me. I can’t deal with really big ideas; they quickly become too big to tackle, and I end up in wholesale abandonment. I can't tell you how often that has happened to me.  When I can't deal with the branches, I cut it off at the trunk. I need to learn the lesson of the bush and move slowly into my visions. Friends can help with that; and therapists and clearness committees. When we are looking at really big transitions in our lives, they help us step back and look at what to prune or put on hold to make it manageable, and to identify the main bone that needs to be protected. At yoga on Monday, Julie leaves us with the YMCA thought-of-the-week: "A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and sings it back to you when you have forgotten the words." (Unknown)

This week my co-worker and I attend a training for the a software product we are considering for the church. We are taken aback by the number of participants who say their church has had (and paid a monthly fee for) the product for years, but never used it. The trainer says he hears that all the time. What is the matter with it, we wonder. Is is something that sounds good, but is really useless? Is is hard to use? But Fred says over and over throughout the day, and again in a conversation at the end of the training another attendee and I have with him: "Roll it out slowly. Pick one part of it and do it well. Then, and only then, move on to the next thing." He say users try to do it all at once, get overwhelmed, and abandon it all.

Late yesterday afternoon, I go for a walk. As usual, I end up in the cemetery walking among the multi-colored trees.

My favorite over-the-top tribute in the Oakwood garden is to a woman, active in the community, who died young a century ago. It has been newly decorated. I wonder if the flowers were left by a descendant, or by a stranger with a sense of artistic whimsy. I love the idea of the latter; but in either case, it was probably not anyone who knew her personally. I sometimes set things straight at markers, but it never occurred to me to pay homage in this way. It gives me ideas.

As the sun begins its descent toward the horizon, I sit down on a gravestone, deciding that staying to watch it set is an appropriate way to spend the last late afternoon of Daylight Saving Time. It takes longer than I anticipate, but I stick it out. Who knows what might happen. It is not a spectacle, but sitting in the crisp air watching the landscape of the sky change and the color shift as the sun slowly sinks until suddenly it is gone and the sky turns dark, is pure joy.

Find your song. Stand back and observe it. Take your time. Find your clearness committee. Move slowly. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time. Enjoy the journey, because it is everything.