Am I really about to write an essay on the yard work of which I was this week the principle actor and witness?
Well I’m going to try, as an experiment, to see if my fledgling powers of communication can impart to you, dear reader, what emotional significance I felt in my heart at the conclusion of five days’ effort clipping, hacking, raking, wheelbarrowing the entrenched varieties of two different species of invasive vine happily growing undisturbed for likely twenty or thirty years up the Hackberry trees in thick woody stems and carpeting the ground for twenty yards on shady eastern side of my East Nashville house.
So, man versus plant. A story as old as time and perhaps not one to which I could add much in the way of interest or modern insight. But aha! Here’s the twist. For in his wisdom an earlier owner of our small patch on Boscobel Street saw to it that a hastily erected chainlink fence take its place on the property wire-to-trunk with the fast growing Hackberries. The noble trees saw no need for collaboration and instead grew themselves silly, swelling to such diameters as to overcome the rigid metal tines in the fencing. In a fine example of the brittleness of man’s makings, the tree grew into the fence, sucking parts of it all the way in, below the bark, inches deep. Thus far, my solution to the resulting mess has been to avoid the area entirely, except when I need to dump an orchid that didn’t make it, cinder blocks for some future imagined purpose, or those ugly black plastic pots that plants come in when you buy them.
When Randa and I got married a few years ago, she inherited this tract of vegetative woe along with the property's sunnier claims. Taking her on the introductory tour, I referred to it with a name that has since become family lore:
“The Place You’re Never Supposed to Go” has been the answer more than once to the question “where did you (Korby) put the rootball from the box elder you cut out of the front yard?” or this January, “Where did you put the Christmas tree?” The Place Where You’re Never Supposed to Go is a no man’s land at our house, overgrown with Kudzu, cancerous in its bearing and vibe.
After having returned from a family trip to Europe (see last week's story) and carrying among our souvenirs a brain-paralyzing jet lag, I thought I would put the holiday week to some productive use.
Visions like these, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, do not arrive fully formed. Rather, you begin as I imagine he did, with some pithy canto about the time you ran into a leopard on an afternoon hike, and, one thing leading to another, find yourself eight years later floating up to meet a celestial Beatrice in the upper reaches of Paradise.
Monday afternoon I felt pretty worthless and a little day drunk from the airline upgrade and thought I could drag that dried up Christmas tree from The Place You're Never Supposed To Go to some wider spot in the yard for a future burning. Well that only took a second. Suddenly I peered into the shadowy stretch of my neglected property and was seized with a conviction that perhaps now should be the time, or could be the time.
Never one to make a hasty commitment, I thought maybe I could find a pair of wire cutters and begin cutting the tines of the closest section of ingrown chain link fence, and if my luck held, I could do it without Randa having to rush me to the emergency room for a tetanus shot.
I appropriated some tin snips from the garage and reluctantly set to work in the couple hours before sunset.
In the bluing twilight I had succeeded in both removing the fence and avoiding a puncture wound. But so often when a thorn is removed, you start looking around for a thornbush.
The short week, my feeling of being somewhat useless mentally, something about my puritanical upbringing which I’ve kept successfully suppressed but for my weakest moments, and this need to put to rights a part of my life long neglected...
Suddenly, it was on.
For the rest of the week, including our nation’s day of self-salute, I spent the brightest hottest hours of the day on my knees, cutting wire from the ground, from trees, digging up metal fenceposts. The upside was I had use the chainsaw on the gnarliest bits of wayward growth. Like all men, I love the sound of a well-run saw and the dangerous limb-removing power to which its buzz alludes.
Still, the chore was not entirely pleasant. No, more like that kind of soul-clearing effort rarely encountered in these softer days where terms like “work” and “posting” are used interchangeably.
It was dirty, filthy really, sweat-dripping-off-my-chin kind of stuff.
By the third day the most offensive sections of fence were rolled up and set aside for I guess a trip to the dump when I get around to it. But then it was the vines. Two varieties. One I’m pretty sure is Kudzu, judging by its wholesale disrespect of everything around it, and the other was either Virginia Creeper or Winter Creeper. Creepy either way.
Mid way through that third day I realized, first, that I was going to see this thing all the way through, and second, cutting the fence away piece-by-bloodblistering-piece was the more enjoyable of the two phases of this elective bit of yard husbandry.
The vines had been allowed to reign supreme for decades, no doubt. Baby vines are pesky and tangle with everything they touch. Grandfather vines are another thing entirely. Somewhere along life’s journey they assume the properties of trees themselves, the stalks turning thick and ropey and I think the term is, hardy? They climb anything they can — fence, house, Hackberry — and in the case of the host trees in question, the long sycophantic relationship had brought forth a science-fictiony looking colony of cilia that had grown from vine to bark and bound the invasive pest to its host like a bad marriage.
Thus established, the stalk was free to climb into the farthest reaches of these fifty foot trees, spreading its own leaves everywhere it could. Extremely rude, I felt, and Randa will tell you there is nothing I abhor more than bad manners.
Obstacles of this kind are rarely encountered by the likes of both me and the axe I found in my garage. It would have to be sharpened, I discovered. In the end I had purchased a grinder. We all need a grinder let’s be honest. Few things are more pleasurable to a man wearing the overalls version of Carhardts than a sharp tool.
Thus emboldened, I started chopping.
I’ll spare you the details of this particular phase of effort, but sufficed to say I hope the tree survives the wounds I inflicted upon it. If you think it’s well within the capabilities of a fairly normally proportioned person to swing an axe and hit a target two inches around, I thank you for your charitable estimation of my athletic facility.
Eventually the woody vein was severed at the first knuckle, but as is so often the case with garden projects, one solved problem begets another. I still had to get the thing out of the tree. But enough, it was getting dark and Randa had three times come out to see if I had yet injured myself. I quit for the day.
My body ached at the shoulder from ripping the chainsaw to life. My hands were nicked and swollen from grabbing resisting roots and yanking them from the ground. I had blood on my person apparently issued from a closed-up wound I could not find.
I felt wonderful. I was alive.
If we were watching a movie together this would be the dream sequence part.
That night I woke up around one in the morning with vines growing out of my head. Sinister things, with a kind of relentless consciousness, the zombie version of plant life. They crawl over your body pressing tendrils into your ears and mouth while you thrash around in your bed fighting for both your life and your reputation as king of the yard.
It’s like when you were a kid and played Tetris too much. You lay in bed in a half-wakeful fit, assembling the forever puzzle.
I told Randa about it the next morning. She said I needed to wrap it up.
“You’re turning this into another one of your stories where the imagined stakes have no point of contact with reality.”
I was offended.
“Are you kidding me!? Have you seen those vines? They are absolutely Tarzan grade. There is a jungle encroaching on our home, Randa. I’m fighting for our family.”
The first rule of an effective drama— anyone will tell you — is to keep it primal. Why upset a working formula?
Yesterday, the final day, was the worst one. I had to pull a ladder out from the garage and lay it up against the tree. I climbed it, carrying a hatchet in my free hand, hacking the fibers that held vine to trunk and grabbing hold of the freed stalk and pulling until I could see where, higher up on the tree, it was stuck. A further climb took me above the roof of the house into view of the surrounding neighborhood and within reach of a leg-breaking fall should one result.
Stakes, Randa, stakes.
It is difficult to impart upon you who was not there how deliciously satisfying it was when I finally separated the last bit of vine from the highest branch, and, returning to earth, took hold of the massive stalk, pulling with all my might, and righting a decades-long wrong. The vine was wrested from the limbs of the Hackberry in a last long complaint and I pulled a fifty-foot section of invasive growth out to the burn pile. In the ancient scrap between man and creeper, the result, in this one instance was clear. A new shaft of sunlight shone through the branches in the space where earlier none existed. I imagined the tree thanking me for vanquishing its age-old enemy. The tree, after all, was all I had for a witness and would have to do.
The great thing about work like that is you have plenty of time to process the interiors of your person. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have entered into such a protracted conflict were not something on my insides in need of sorting.
I thought about the near particulars of my professional life — the podcast and its growth and future, my music and where it was going, how best to connect my dream (which is to sell Morse Code to a simpatico platform and thus make a season of excellent television) to reality. And underneath all that, you might say, hiding beneath a carpet of unwanted ivy, the deeper questions that are part of every person’s heart.
Am I doing what is best with the time on earth I’ve been given? What could I be doing better? Should I push or be patient?
It’s not like the focus on my metaphysical quest was total. I listened to a ton of podcasts. I’ve been interested in Tom Holland’s lectures lately. Not the actor. The Tom I like is a British writer and historian whose online talks have bent my ear lately. He gave one at the Hay Festival in England a few years ago, on the origins of Islam. It was not without controversy, but on the whole I felt the speaker had sympathies with the religion, a sympathy which matches my own peace-minded inclinations.
In my tendency to pay attention to what I might call the higher things of the mind, I have lately been accused of withdrawing from the problems of the world in a way that was irresponsible and — by my more activist-minded detractors — unforgivably privileged. Accusations like these are in the air these days, and while I’ve never put much stock in name calling, it would be wrong to say that I dismiss out of hand the question of my responsibility as a thoughtful person to engage in the problems of our time.
Behind close doors, most of my free research time is spent on cultural questions — gathering perspectives, weighing arguments. That I have not put forth my own take is largely because I don’t yet feel called to add my name to one side or the other of what is a most bitter conflict. Furthermore, taking sides is anathema to my weltanschaung. I just wanted to write that sentence. What I should have said was, since I was a little kid, I have intuitively looked toward what people have in common rather than not. And through my art and music and writing, have tried to present reasons and opportunities for opposing tribes, sides, groups to move a little closer to one another. Lets Just Have Supper is an example of that.
Every thinking person has their issue, their voting issue you might say. For instance my mom’s is abortion. A candidate’s position on that question determines her vote. My issue is free speech. I didn’t care about politics one way or another until I noticed in about 2016 a new term starting to float in the ether of polite discourse. Which was the term hate speech. Suddenly there was a question of what could and could not be said in public. Because people might be hurt. On the surface that seems reasonable enough. But under those auspices a critical question obtains: who decides what is hate speech?
It’s a question that hasn’t been answered yet. But in the parsing out the particulars a lot of bad decisions have been made.
So there I was, hacking plants to death, thinking about what strategies I might employ to effectively bring the people around me into a more perfect union. That’s all I want to say about that right now.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some. They have to do with listening to other people, especially people who think differently from you. Actually listening to them and responding without calling them a name. Its one of the most difficult things to do, and its predicated on a compound assumption: one, this person’s perspective has a value inherent in itself, and two, there is a possibility you might be wrong. Hard to do, but it is the only way forward that doesn’t result in the collective immolation of an otherwise pretty good gig.
Solving critical problems like these is a pursuit probably best left to smarter people than me. But I have a role to play in making the world better, if I can.
Carrying an armload of floral detritus across your yard during a hot southern summer in full bloom? Not the worst way to put your house in order.