Project Hedge

Project Hedge.

I have a very very long laurel hedge that acts as a barrier between the green space and my house. I think it's holding the hill up, and as result I'm quite fond of my hedge except when it begins to encroach on my view. After a few years of attempting to trim it myself, a little over a year ago I spent many hundreds of dollars and got it professionally trimmed. My thought was that I would have them take a big chunk off the top of the hedge, and then I could go a couple years and not worry about it. Unfortunately, the hedge folks definition of 'a foot or so off' and my definition of 'a foot or so off' was, well, about a foot off. They essentially cleaned up the hedge. Now, it certainly needed cleaning up. When I trim the hedge, there is this row along the back that I can't reach that stays long, kind of a hedge mo-hawk - hedgehawk. The pros took off the hawk and left it all neat and even, but they didn't really take anything off the top. So, for the last year, the hedge as been slowly rising over the level of the windows.

This year thanks to project back porch, I don't have multiple hundreds of dollars to spent on the hedge. And the thought of trimming it myself is over welming, it's a long hedge! A couple of months ago, I began hatching a plan. Maybe I could do the hedge myself if I just took it in bite sized pieces. Maybe if I do six - 10 feet or so a weekend, I can do the whole thing. And maybe if I take it really low, maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to reach all the way back and trim the whole thing - without falling off the ladder and killing myself.

So today is a beautiful warm sunny day in Seattle and I decided I have been procrastinating way too many projects for much too long. Project Hedge seemed a good place to start. Now, a couple hours later it felt like I expended a huge amount of energy on a tiny fraction of the hedge. But it's possible I can finish by springtime (in time, of course, for the hedge to start a huge growth spurt). It's also possible, Project Hedge will convince me to buy a condo! Or, even more possible, that it will be pouring the rest of the winter and Project Hedge is about to go on hiatus.

I'm thinking ladder height is good.