I don’t know who made the bigger mistake. Me, the actual culprit, or my husband. You see, after listening to numerous complaints about the landscaping in front of our house, my other half simply got out the hedge trimmer, handed it to me and told me to trim the bushes any way I liked.
He either had extreme confidence in me, or figured that I couldn’t make the bushes much worse than they already were.
“But, but, but…” I protested.
“Just start on the outside and work all of the way around.”
“I’m too short to get the top.”
“I’ll do the top when you are done with the rest.”
Then he abandoned me.
Although it was slow going at first, I actually started to get the hang of it. Everything was shaping up nicely. With the exception of the tops, which as we know I couldn’t reach, the two bushes were rounding out like twin globes.
“Uh, that is actually one bush,” my husband said.”
“But there is a clear gap in the middle.”
“Yeah, well, last fall do you remember when I cleaned all of the leaves off of the roof?”
“Uh-huh”
“Well, they sat on the bush too long and killed it in that spot.”
“Hmm.”
I got back to work. Our neighbor’s son and granddaughter came over for a visit. My husband chatted while I tried to turn two bushes back into one. The hedge trimmer died.
I shut off the switch and checked all of the cord connections and plugs. I turned it back on. Nothing. I checked everything again. No luck.
I walked back to my husband and told him that something was wrong with the trimmer.
“You talk to my wife for a bit, and I’ll be right back,” he told the neighbor. At least he didn’t roll his eyes skyward. He did recheck all of the cord connections and plugs, two more times. But no loud sighs or rolling of the eyes.
He did eventually find the problem. There was a cut in the cord. Apparently in my new found bush taming enthusiasm, I mistook the black of the cord for a branch.
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