Liverpool
Last year I massacred this wisteria growing five stories up the back fire escape and while quietly applauded by one or two for the increased chances I added to their ability to escape a fire, the owner of the vine and the person who ask me to trim the vine (oh, you said trim?) were a little upset with me. I did not know that the brief yearly flowering and the godly wafting scent would take precedent over the logical consideration of safety and I bantered back a bit in a futile attempt at healing my slightly wounded pride, because I had initially thought the job was quite well done, and had been quite satisfied with it.
So when yesterday the two offended parties asked me to trim the tree out front I said I would be glad to. If they would come out and point to each and every limb they wanted removed.
Jimson Creed walked up and seeing the two supervisors and the one worker bee commented that we had all the makings of a government road crew. I am not a proponent of micro-managing but I had to mutely disagree with Jimson regarding his assertion that this two to one supervisor to worker ratio looked like trouble. My healing process requires a stricture against disagreement regarding all things in the realm of pruning, and in any case all he said was it looked like trouble and I think I must respect his opinion, based as it would be on years of experience with the two supervisors. And now, picturing myself standing back as he was, taking in the scene, I might even go as far as to wholeheartedly agree that yes it could to the naked eye, unrestrained by a pruned pride or desire not to make the same mistake twice in one year, look like trouble.
But in the end the selective limb removal was an astounding success and other than the small gash on my index finger there was no one wounded.
As I cut up the limbs into pieces small enough to fit in a garbage bag an old woman from the Bronx stopped to talk to me about things that grow and die and rats who eat peppers growing in window boxes. She asked me was I Jewish and I said no. I wanted however to project a little more ethnicity than my WASP upbringing allows so I told her I was half Lebanese. She evidently did not understand that and kept guessing what I may have meant, and possibly I meant Liverpool because she starting singing yeah, yeah, yeah to some tune that to me meant the Beatles and I said, Oh yeah, the Beatles. She nodded happily and we were grooving on the same page until I said, no, I'm American, which is nothing to be ashamed of and really she didn't seem to hold it against me. At some point in our conversation she equated me with the good people of the earth, she had said some people are bad not like me, and wanting to remain for awhile longer puffed up with accomplishment I did not mention my last years slaughtering of the wisteria.
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