Hedge cutting...

My hedge needs cutting and I hate cutting my hedge. I have all the gear - electric trimmers, a Garden Groom that collects the cuttings in a bag as you go, a really long extension lead (well it’s a really long hedge) trestles, ladders, tarpaulins – but it’s such a faff getting it all out and setting it all up that last time I just used hand shears.

I really hate cutting my hedge, but I think about cutting it a lot. I was thinking about it on Saturday, wondering how I could make the job more interesting. Perhaps I could do it blindfold? No, best not, I hate the sight of my own blood and transfusions are always problematical.

Maybe I could make the hedge look more interesting without the spilling of my AB negative. Perhaps if I shaped the hedge into something unusual then I might find cutting it a pleasure rather than a chore. That was it! Topiary was the answer to all my hedge-cutting ennui. Now what interesting leafy fantasy should I make it into? A train would be ideal; it really is a long hedge, or something more naturalistic, a herd of elephants, a flock of sheep, a dragon? Perhaps I might go for a series of geometric shapes - a sphere, followed by a pyramid, then a spiral, a cube, then back to a sphere, and so on to infinity and beyond? Probably not; just down to the caravan, not beyond, that would be too wrist-achingly tiring.

There is something so surreal about topiary, maybe it’s the perspective of a long strait hedge made all weird and wonderful with shears and imagination, or a small box bush teased into the shape of a heart with scissors. Dali would have made good topiary - it is by nature so Daliesque a pass-time. I can imagine him trimming a full size giraffe out of a yew tree, dousing it with petrol, and then setting it alight with a twist of his moustache and the scratch of a match. I wasn’t going to burn my hedge down, instead I sat gazing, imagining the magnificent ocean liner it could become, or maybe a teapot followed by a line of dancing teacups, until it changed into a swathe of fluffy green clouds.

It would be quite a challenge, but it would be good fun despite the work.

And then I remembered the last time I ‘did’ something to the hedge. All I ‘did’ was remove a little of the bottom of the hedge to allow the light to get to my trailing lobelia, six inches or so that’s all - but apparently you just don’t do that sort of thing with a boundary hedge, particularly in Wales. It was weeks before Will started talking to me again.

Oh well, my topiaristic fantasy will have to wait – just like cutting my hedge.