Thursday, March 02, 2006

Pruning

My neighbor to the south (the guy who doesn't like my oldest daughter because she speaks her mind) owns two cherry trees that grow on the fence line between our back yards. The trunks of the trees are on his side of the fence. Half of the limbs reach into our yard. The fence is on our property and belongs to us.

I used to hate cherries, which stems from a horrible cherry flavored lifesavers choking/barfing incident that happened when I was three. I'm still not particularly fond of cherry flavoring, but I love to eat fresh cherries. One of these trees produces Bing cherries - deep red almost black colored fruit when ripe that are sweet and juicy. Even in season, a pound of Bings is costly. The other tree produces Rainer, a more reddish colored cherry - also sweet and juicy, but not as sweet as the Bings are.

But I digress...

On Saturday, Moose was pruning ALL of the trees in his back yard. These two cherry trees were targeted for selective pruning as well. The trees are already set with buds for this season's fruit. I was curious when my dog alerted me to some type of activity in our yard. Just before the limbs being pruned landed into our back yard, I made eye contact with Moose and gave him a neighborly smile.

What is odd is that Moose only trimmed off those two huge limbs from those trees. Both limbs that he trimmed grew directly above the fence, running parallel to it. The branches, of course, jutted out into our yard.

What is more odd is that he just left them there. No, "Oops, I'll come over later and take care of that." No, "Oh, I didn't mean to cut off limbs that were in your yard." No nothing. Just the eye contact and me smiling.

The next day, Poetroad asked me, "Why did you cut off those tree limbs?" "I didn't," I said. "Moose was pruning his tree." Three days later, I finally went out there and chopped up the limb so it would fit into the yard debris can.

I don’t get it. Is the Cherry Nazi trying to send me a message? “No cherries for you!”

1 comment:

bluesugarpoet said...

Yes, a juvenile action certainly deserves a juvenile response. Let me make a list:

1. Ex-lax brownies
2. Start saving cantelope guts
3. Ask to use bathroom; stuff showerhead full of toilet paper.
4. Next time he comes to talk with me, pretend that I forgot how to speak English.
5. Take over a nice glass of specially brewed "tea."
6. Dispose of the bucket o' dog doo that I have in my back yard - six months worth.

And that is just the beginning....