Better Than Therapy

So, yesterday afternoon I found the missing bow saw. It was under a bunch of stuff in the garage. How it got there or why I did not see it the first four times I looked in that place is beyond me. I realize now that it had been hiding from me. It knew that I would tire it out as I did.

There is a tree in the far right corner of the lawn, a stately and once more beautiful Blue Spruce. The lawn slopes downward where the tree stands so, unless you actually walk over to that corner you would never even notice how over grown the tree was. It is so huge and the branches and limbs so gigantic that when I mow the lawn I have avoided the thing. It was almost scary. It had grown for three or more years without pruning. It had branches that were less than two feet above the ground. They are or I should say were ten feet out-stretched. When I would come near the thing the branches would reach out and try to grab me like that killer tree from the old SNL skit but, more sexual. It would caress my neck and the back of my head. I swear it did! I had wanted to do something about all this but I could not find the saw and my mind made it easy to forget about the molesting tree until the lawn needed mowing again.

What a friggin' job. The trimmings produced a mound about five feet high and roughly seven feet wide at the curb. Somehow the whole process was therapeutic in a way. The sawing motion was somehow very relaxing for me. When you add that I am very anal and the imagined result of a well trimmed tree ready to continue to grow skyward you may well understand how good it was for me. The trimming of each branch seemed to energize me further. An hour or so later when the tree was once again a thing of beauty, a wave of sadness came over me as I stared at the bow saw.

I then looked about the yard and there were both real and imagined branches and limbs that needed to come down all over the property. In my controlled madness I sawed vigorously the limb of a tree of undetermined specie near the curb. The neighbor stopped what he was doing to watch. His expression was distracting as if he knew that there might be a better way to address whatever would cause me to attack even a dead limb with such determination. I quickly waved giving him the universal sign to stop watching me. I continued with my work and then it happened. I had misjudged the connecting limbs and branches. The thing although dead was huge and was it not for my cat-like reflexes... Covered with sawdust and sweat it was now time for a shower. What a fine mood I was in for the rest of the evening.