This weekend I gave our two 20 foot conifers at the front of the house, a haircut. Third time I’ve done this in five years and I think I now need to pay attention to my size and age, and make this my last major forestry project. When all due attention has been paid to health and safety – stable ladders and no stretching or leaning, taking care of cables when operating trimmers around and above, protecting the eyes from flying and falling clippings – when all such attention is paid, the one thing impossible to avoid is the aching muscles, (all of them from calves, to thighs, to back, to neck, to arms) – and the shoulders that feel as if I’ve been dancing at a Scottish wedding reception where I was hurled around at Strip the Willow for two hours by people bigger and stronger than me!
That said, I do enjoy getting stuck in to a job that’s more than whirling around with a flymo, garden hose or dutch hoe. And the trees do now look as if they are part of a garden instead of arboreal accidents. And I suppose that also says something about my own way of construing the world – trying to make at least some parts of it tidy, shaped – a way of pretending mere humans can control and shape the world around. Well of course we can…for a while. But at a cost – and for me, that will probably be paid in the next day or two when my shoulders refuse to allow my arms to go above my head. Might well ruin my personal praise and prayer time, being unable to raise my arms……
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