Lawless Loppers Running Loose in the West

Mangled Blobs Yearning to Breathe Free

By Jill Kuraitis, 4-10-07

I say we are each allowed one or two firmly-held pet peeves.  My neighbor, for example, believes that the moment the garbage truck leaves your house, the trash cans should be disappeared by someone.  Empty bins sitting around askew on the curb drive her nuts.

She’s a nice person, so we allow her this eccentricity.  We still don’t take our trash cans in, most of us being at work and all, but we grant her the right to her peeve.

My husband has a thing about throwing away the used coffee filter when the coffee finishes dripping. Encountering a dried-up filter with used grounds wigs him out. This is the same man who, without noticing, will walk through goose crap straight into the house.

That wigs ME out.

But nothing gets me quite like the pruning crimes going unreported across the West.  Apparently people stroll out on the first nice day of spring, take a look at their shrubs, and get an irrational urge to attack them with dull weapons. 

A zest for top-lopping grips many ordinarily rational people. In the interest of good journalism, I have checked with my snitches, and shrubs are not Marines.

The forbidding flat haircuts WORK for the Marines.  You can tell a military guy that way, and it’s good and intimidating, just as it should be. But scary shrubs?

Then there’s the concept of allowing green things to take on their natural shape – a much nicer look according to my garden code. I’m not suggesting a pruning moratorium, mind you, just a more thoughtful hand, like this Kelsey dogwood:

When Mamie Eisenhower had bangs, people pruned their shrubs like this:

I’m at a loss to explain this 1950s style of gardening, especially when a graceful group of modern shrubs could look like this:

These junipers were whacked by a malicious hedge trimmer wielded by someone with anger issues:

Yellow forsythia, that hopeful signal of spring, are naturally a fountain spray of color:

Or they can be molested into this:

PlantAmnesty, a non-profit organization dedicated to stamping out improper pruning and gardening practices, has a referral service of qualified pruners and horticulturists with a proven work record.  God bless America, I am not making this up.

I wouldn’t try to attribute motive to bushwhackers.  After all, I’m obsessed with this trivial matter, and my only motive is beautification. True, it takes longer to prune nicely than it does to storm the garden with gas-powered boy toys, but hey.  Everything worth doing is worth doing properly, right? 

Just ask a Marine. 

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