Quasi Bonsai

In a bought of motivated kindness my brother and I have taken on the wilderness that is our backyard. We've completely touched up the deck and even painted the trim. We were feeling like rockstars and wanted to see what other projects we could tackle. John started to trim the hedges, and I asked if I could take over.


TRIMMING THE HEDGES IS POSSIBLY THE BEST CHORE ON THE PLANET.


I went Edward Scissor Hands crrrrrrazy. I buzzed everything. Not a shrub in my parents yard escaped the trimmers. I cannot believe that I was never given this chore before, or that it's even considered a chore.

Anyway, we have this mean and horrible shrub in our back yard. It's prickly and huge, and is probably fully loaded with a 20 foot root system. Anytime anyone goes within 10 feet of it, you will inevitably walk away barbed and angry.

My mom told John to 'clean it up' and told him he could shape it however he wanted. John and I horsed around for approximately way longer than was appropriate and finally decided to get to work. John came up with the stellar idea of giving my mom a Bonsai hedge.


John struggled severely. Every few minutes came a dirty word and a slew of prickers.I felt mostly helpless but thoroughly enjoyed seeing my brother struggle. I decided I couldn't think of anything better to help him through this task than playing his trumpet for him. Our procession of horsing around continued which was the key mistake. In between 'tunes' I was showing him which branches were dead. We picked a branch we thought was dead. Later on we determined it to be the 'mother branch' becuase it pretty well encompassed the ENTIRE shrub.

John's jaw hit the floor as he pulled the WHOLE shrub up (this is a photo after we had to dismantle the rest of of it!)



I couldn't breathe. HAHAHAHAHH. We RUINED my mom's shrub. She hated this devil shrub too, so we were hoping she wouldn't care. Well, John was hoping she wouldn't care.. I was just doing all I could to not pee my pants with laughter.









There are few things more priceless in life than seeing your brother's face when he thinks he's about to be in BIG trouble. Of course he wasn't, and that's REALLY when the laughter started. It looks like we'll be putting big mittens on my brother and only letting him use butter knives from this point forward.







Oh, and how gorgeous are these flowers?! They are from my Aunt Beth and Uncle Bruce's garden.. they are certainly day makers!