Ever Just Get Tired of Something?

ProfessorRoush does.  He gets tired of winter.  He gets tired of the peak of summer heat.  He gets tired of mowing grass.  He gets tired of drought.  He gets tired of frosts on the fruit trees.  He gets tired of resurfacing blacktop.  He gets tired of cleaning the garage.  He gets tired of home maintenance.  He really gets tired of large furry white-tailed rats invading his garden and smaller naked-tail pack rats invading his shrubs.

He also occasionally gets tired of a particular plant, and this weekend's victim was this short hedge of Buxus microphylla koreana 'Wintergreen' that I had planted in the center curve of the circular driveway.  I planted it initially to partially hide cars parked in the driveway in front of the house.  If I had a more mystical side, I'd say that it served as a feng shui improvement to divert bad energy flow from my front door.  It's been a love-hate relationship from the outset.

Before planting them, I was ignorant of boxwoods, save for my extreme desire to surround myself with broad-leaf evergreens instead of conifers, the latter being a magnet for bagworms in this area.  I didn't know then, but soon learned, that they smell like unneutered male cat pee over vast portions of the year.  I didn't understand that a medium hedge would break up the view of the prairie from the house. I was unaware that in a very bad winter in Kansas, boxwoods could sustain snow damage and look terrible for most of a spring season.   I didn't even suspect in my naive state that the pack rats that would soon consider me a particularly benevolent god for erecting safe shelter as a base for their nefarious car and lawn mower wire-eating activities.    

So, this spring, tired of my boxwood pack rat condominiums, I resolved to eliminate them.  Yesterday, I took advantage of the prediction for strong spring winds and I used the tractor and bush-hog to mow them all off at ground level.  That took a satisfying 15 minutes and it only took another half-hour or so to load and remove two cart-loads of debris.  It's not perfectly clean yet, but I'm hoping the Kansas wind completes the job before Mrs. ProfessorRoush takes issue with my work.  I can feel her somewhere inside, trying to find something fault with the effort anyway, because she was merely lukewarm to the idea of savaging the hedge in the first place.

But the house, in my opinion, looks much better now.  In tactical terms, I now have a clear field of fire to defend against pack rat invaders. The prairie to my north view can serve as a guide to all the summer storm clouds that want to slide over the Flint Hills.   Passing cars will also have a much clearer view of the flowering trees and spring peonies and the summer Orientpet lilies and roses that dot my front landscape beds.  Thankfully, given the natural inclination of Kansas landscape plants to die, it is fairly simple to give them a nudge and correct gardening mistakes, I'm not sure what a Feng Shui practitioner would say, but ProfessorRoush feels much better.