Making the Cut

I used to spend hours and days outside with these tools saving the property from invasive cedars and Japanese honeysuckle vines, and after about seven years the clippers and weed whip, dulled and unusable, sat in the garage until I realized a while ago, "I can now pay to sharpen these," and, to be honest with you, also thought, "When the apocalypse comes, any day now, I will wish I had sharpened these tools" to cut a clearing in the underbrush and clip and trim branches to build my lean-to, and so on.

Nobody else, I was sure, ever let their tools get so dull. Embarrassed to bring them to the sharpener, I prepared a fib -- "I bought these at a garage sale" -- in case the sharpener said, "Whee doggie. I've never in my life seen garden tools in such a deplorable condition." I wasn't sure whether the weed whip, my favorite, with its double-edged and serrated blade, could even be honed. I never knew anyone who cleaned or sharpened garden tools; Demetrius left his crusted with clay and soil. Also needing treatment were two lopping shears and a very old pair of hedge shears with wooden handles. The hedge shears were already here, rusted stiff, blades blackened with time and handles sticky with dust, when I moved in long ago. I wondered whether they could be salvaged. In the garage when I moved here was also a scythe, an actual scythe, but I think it's gone.

The sharpener sharpened and spiffed up all four and covered the freshly honed edges with paper, a courtesy unexpected and appreciated. Here they are back home, and out I go because I like cold weather for doing the heavy work of cutting.

Can This Firebowl Be Saved?

Finished winterizing all my single-pane doors and windows (all but two windows now blocked with 3/4-inch insulation) just under the deadline on a lucky 66-degree dry day with wind howling up high in the sky, where a hawk was riding thermals. Today: cold and rainy, with wintry mix approaching. And as long as I was out there working, I cut down some upstart red cedars and briars, and took a look at my firebowl,  neglected now for years while I overworked myself elsewhere. In December 2010 all this brush got cut down. Currently it looks like:

I can do a couple of things, such as move the firebowl away from the base of the oaks, but before that, the brush must be cleared. It isn't widespread enough to hire a brush hog for, and my friend who owned a chainsaw looked at it askance (to be fair, he hates manual work of any kind). The green sprouts at the photo's bottom right are Demetrius' onions,  perennials, sole survivors of his gardening; these I keep and use and won't have mown down. Decided to try clearing this with hand tools as my project for December. Going outside in chilly temps and working is the only way for me not to hate cold weather. I hope for an improved firebowl I'll use more often, for burning dry leaves and fallen branches, and staring into, as time counts down to the winter solstice (only 25 days!).

See My Christmas Present

See the overgrown brush? I'd planned on hacking at it two hours a day for four months until I cleared it. (See entry "My Machete," Dec. 19, in menu at left.) This is the "before" picture.








See my friend and hero Reeve? As my Christmas present he brought his gas-powered brushcutter and cut all the brush and briars from hell's half-acre in one hour or less, and then made a bonfire of the debris, using just one match.

The "after" picture. (The fallen branch along the bottom is the same as in the "before" picture; there's just a lot less of it.) Best Christmas present. Reeve got a big omelet, a big hug, and other good and valuable consideration.

My Machete

Demetrius the Gardener died almost two years ago now, and left in my garage his machete, his favorite and most savage tool, which I never touched until today because I was afraid of its size, weight, and wickedly sharp double-edged head. It's 54 inches tall. I'm 62 inches tall. He also left me all the heavy outdoor work he used to do.

My winter project is clearing two years' worth of weeds, briars, fallen branches and Japanese honeysuckle around my twin oaks, with an eye toward a hammock or treehouse between them someday, and I've toiled along with a weed whip and then brushcutters, but in places the brush (you can see some of it behind my blue jacket there) made barriers so dense I couldn't cut through them except with an axe -- or the machete. As usual when I'm reluctant I told myself, "Ain't nobody gonna do it FOR you," and got to work and learned it. The concave side was good for hacking down piles and layers, six feet tall, of dry fallen branches; the convex side for pulverizing them.

While I worked I kept peeling off clothing and wondered why I dreaded winter when it wasn't that bad at all. And every now and then I rested, because I'm older now, and saw that the machete was really a handsome tool. And when I got tired I took off my work gloves and told myself, "Put the machete away now; you have no business using such a thing when you're tired," congratulating myself on my wisdom, except I told myself, "Just a few more minutes" and that's when I cut and scraped my hand -- not on the machete, but on a dry branch sticking up. I said, "Okay, I get it; that was a warning," and put the machete away for the day.