Amy vs. the Bush

Since I am now graduated and currently unemployed, I have the matter of filling my days with something productive to contend with. Now, I could spend the entire day watching Stargate SG-1 (and I'm still scratching my head as to how nobody ever told me how awesome that show was), but seriously, that's wholly unproductive.

On the other hand, I can earn good deeds by helping my parents out around the house. So last night I asked my mom what things I could do, after I caught her trying to haul some old bags of mulch. Bags which have been laying in the front garden for at least a year or more. My dad hasn't been able to unload them and I wasn't sure what to do with them up until now. So I got my mom to stop and promised her that this week I'd take care of the mulch--which is now mostly just dirt.

Now I have a short list of things I can do around the house this week. Before I could dump those bags of dirt, and distribute the dirt evenly in the garden, I had to battle a large bush that my mom has been referring to as a "monstrosity." It's a bush in front of our porch that in height surpassed the roof of the house. It had outgrown the garden, transgressed onto the porch. And my mom wanted it cut back far enough that it wasn't any higher than the porch railing.

So today, armed with a pruner and hedge trimmer I began my assault. I had to pull out a ladder because the top parts were way too high for me to reach, not to mention that there were several feet of bush in front of me also making it difficult. A couple times I just leaned the ladder against the bush to climb up. At one point I was on top of the porch railing, holding on to a column with one hand, the other hand reaching out over the bush with the hedge trimmer. Yes, really.

Now the top of the bush is still a little (but just a little) higher than the top of the porch railing, and I think I dragged more of that bush out to the curb than I left in the garden. I've still got a few more branches I'll need to move out--eventually I quit working since I needed to pray and couldn't do so without showering and changing clothes--but I'll get back to that tomorrow inshaaAllaah.