Prune surprise

Today, I discovered that pruning shrubs has a great deal in common with plucking eyebrows. You start small, intending just to tweak a little here, pluck a little there, tidy things up a bit, but it's so hard to know when to stop, isn't it? After you've evened up one side, the other side doesn't look quite right, so you tweak a little more here and pluck a little more there, and pretty soon you're looking altogether quite surprised!

That's all I have to say about my front yard right now except that it's probably a good job that the sun went down when it did, forcing me indoors to confront the laundry. Joy tells me, apropos of nothing, that there's a reason people aren't supposed to cut their own hair. Meanwhile, I worry about Tree Top Joe's feelings next time he passes down my street with his shears. Perhaps there's a reason he charges $40 a snip, and perhaps there's a reason I can barely tell he's been. Perhaps that's the whole point!