Off the grid: Dangers of an industrious husband

I was in the garden pulling weeds that were more like small trees, thanks to my typical season of summer neglect. Once I get things planted, I assume my vegetables will stand their ground and I can ignore them until harvest, though this method has not produced much yield thus far.

Over the rustle of trees swaying in the hot summer breeze, I heard the hum of some kind of power tool on the property. It was not a familiar whir or buzz to me, but it sounded productive. It would come from near the shop one minute and then from behind the house another.

“Hmm,” I thought, “it sure is lovely having an industrious husband.”

In marriage (I’m six weeks in now, so I pretend to know things), it is important that we learn to accept some things as rather a concession for the benefits of others. I have learned that, in order to bask in the joys of a productive husband, I must concede to his frequent surprise acquisition of power tools. Sometimes I think his retirement plan is a power tool rental company or perhaps a pneumatic museum.

Both are fine with me as long as the tools are used on home and yard improvement until then. Ideally, they would not be operated by me.

By midday I was beginning to get curious about the noise, but I denied the urge to go see what he was up to. Inquiries as such inevitably result in both a lengthy explanation on how to use a new power tool and a theatrical demonstration of a decade of landscaping potential. Sometimes there is even discord about where to put the sauna we’ll build in about six years.

Instead, I stayed in my Garden of Optimistic Vegetable Growth (where the radishes have formed their own posse and taken over the lettuce beds) and practiced gratitude.

I read that practicing gratitude is a key component of creating happiness. I also read that gardening does this, but I’ve had to rely mostly on the former. Sometimes I find myself at the bottom of the gratitude barrel with statements like, “I’m so grateful I don’t live in Ireland during the potato famine.” Albeit, even those guys were better farmers than I.

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that Charlie told me he had a new weed-trimming tool and was “cutting back” some of the yard overgrowth. When fire season approaches and the tansy threatens a hostile overthrow, it makes sense to thin some things out.

As I walked toward the shop, I noticed a pile of sticks and branches drying out in the driveway where a once blossoming and beautiful bush had stood. Some of it still stood – the bottom eighteen inches of jagged stems – now poking out with promise to impale a passer-by.

My head quickly shot up. I had heard the tool all over the yard. I scanned the perimeter of the house. There, strewn about the yard like indiscriminate victims of a landscaping war, were the drying out tops of my carefully curated decorative weeds.

The lush overgrowth of bracken and thimbleberry (the most successful edibles in my yard) had been hacked down to dry and frayed stalks. Plants I had been watering tenderly all summer (mostly to hide other plants that refused to live) were now a wasteland of stumps.

I let out a groan of horror. “My plants!” I shrieked. I could have said, “My native weeds!” out of kindness toward Charlie’s predicament, as he was now standing beside me looking rather panicked and presumably wondering if some real tragedy had occurred.

As often as I kill plants, it’s remarkable how heart-breaking their demise still is for me.

“Uh oh,” said my new husband, wondering what part of our vows protected him from liability in this moment, “you better not go to the back of the house.”

I did not – partly because I was afraid of what I’d see and partly because I thought I might find that buzzing tool and in my distress, commit atrocious crimes. Enough atrocities had occurred on this battlefield already.

Having mourned appropriately but not tolerant of bearing witness to further sap-shed, I hired a teenager to come clean up the yard.

“Take the rake and the wheelbarrow to the back of the house,” I said, “I can’t see it for myself, it’s too disturbing.” I went inside to listen to bagpipes and practice more gratitude until my helper came in with a question.

“That’s a great fire perimeter you’ve made out there,” she said. She offered to trim some areas with the weed-eater, but I twitched and gave her a small pair of pruning shears instead. Which is all Charlie is getting for Christmas this year, too. Perimeter pruning shears.