You know, sometimes I swear y’all will get sick of reading about how something in the world fucked with me and I am just sitting here scratching my head trying to figure it all out.
Case in point: the rosebush.
No, scratch that. It’s more than just a rosebush. It’s so mean that it deserves capital letters.
The Rosebush.
There. Much better. Like The White House. Or The Atomic Bomb. Or O.J. Simpson.
So The Rosebush.
This weekend, the weather has been unbelievably gorgeous. Better than the previous two months, actually, hovering in the low sixties. On Friday morning, I announced that I would like to spend Saturday working on the yard, getting it ready for winter. Esteban balked, mostly because the man has not mowed the lawn since August. The lawn was threatening to become The Lawn. What is more, it was that thick pile lawn that you get when you pay people to come and spray super secret chemicals that I’m certain they stole from marijuana growers in Peru or something because it makes it dense and lush like a Rogaine commercial.
Wait’ don’t go back and try to reread that last sentence and try to figure out that crazy metaphor. Let’s just move on and not speak of it again, shall we?
So Esteban’s job would be to mow the lawn. Because it was Lawn xXx, he knew that he’d have to bag it and it would take something like 8 hours. I scoffed. I did. I scoffed right to his face. ‘It takes forty five minutes to cut the lawn. Do not tell me it will take eight hours.’ Scoff scoff scoff. But I assured him that I would be outside working with him. He would not be alone. While he was cutting, I would be in the back, trying to clean up The Rosebush. He scoffed right back at me. ‘That’s going to take’ what’ half an hour?’
If you remember this spring, my mother and I actually attempted to tame The Rosebush. And tame it we did. I hauled away three wheelbarrows full of thorny Evil. But apparently, The Rosebush subscribes to the tenants of Nietzsche.
That which does not kill it makes it stronger.
The Rosebush was here when we bought the house. It climbs a very old shaky trellis right next to the door to the garage. It gives off these lovely sweet smelling fuschia English roses for about a week every year. The effect is breathtaking for that week. During the rest of the time, it creeps out into my abandoned vegetable garden, which is now inhabited by a persistent clump of lamb’s ear (also came with the house) and a sturdy little clump of garlic chives (the only remnant of my one attempt at a kitchen garden several years ago). It also has taken up the cause of making the door to the backyard completely impenetrable and, due to this, will set off the security alarm that alerts me to the presence of my stalkers and other admirers, as the light was placed there after one snowfall when I made the rather alarming discovery of many large man foot prints outside my bedroom window. But whenever a gentle breeze blows, the thorny tendrils waggle in front of the motion sensor and shine a light into the little courtyard area of the backyard. I would think it was trying to protect me if it weren’t so damned Evil.
I started hacking with my garden sheers but The Rosebush proved mostly immune to the six inch blades. I returned to the garage and donned a pair of suede gardening gloves and grabbed the tree nippers, which look like bolt cutters. The Rosebush realized that it was no match for the enormous chopping power of the nippers, so resorted instead to maiming me.
As God as my witness, it took a bite out of my ass. I can almost hear it, the rustling of the leaves and thorns sounding like words ‘I’m sorry I’m so mad at you, baby, you know I don’t mean it, you just make me so angry. AND IF I CAN’T HAVE YOU NO ONE ELSE CAN!!!’
(I totally stole that from Chauffi, but he said I could.)
I think it was seriously trying to kill or maim me. It was hooking me with shark teeth sized thorns on my pants, on my shirt, on my gloves, wherever it could get purchase. What is more, after deeper chopping and hacking, I realized that somehow there were trees growing in the garden. TREES! And there was not one rosebush, but FIVE! Apparently, the tentacles had been searching for places to take root, to multiple, to take over the entire yard. They were blocking the door so that we wouldn’t discover its nefarious plan for world domination. I think it wanted to take our house hostage and not give it back until we had supplied several tons of Miracle Grow in small unmarked packages.
What is more, not only was it growing its own little forest and trying to kill the peony’s, but also somehow the expensive blood red Jackson & Perkins rose on the other side of the bed, which I killed three years ago when I was too lazy to cover it before a particularly nasty winter, has come back to life. It’s alive. ALIVE!!
The Rosebush and its evil deciduous helper trees resurrected it. The Rosebush knew that it would need new pollen to cross with and grow stronger, thus it rebuilt the Jackson & Perkins from trace samples of DNA. Or something.
Five wheelbarrows. Five. Full of thorny wicked Evil. It bit through my suede gloves, actually drawing blood in no less than twelve spots on my hands. I became the human pincushion, but yet I struggled onward, fighting through the bramble that seemed to move on its own. It was a man versus nature struggle, a blockbuster directed by James Cameron with a soundtrack by James Horner, and the part of Weetabix played by Angelina Jolie wearing 75 pounds of padding and still only looking like a size 16.
Esteban ventured into the backyard and began to offer suggestions. For the record, I hate that. If we should ever part, that will be reason number one. He goes into Foreman mode, ordering me around like some worker ant and it makes me growl, especially since I had been doing just fine without him moving the thorns around, swinging them dangerously close to my face when he was ‘trying to help’. Don’t critique me while I’m working, and I won’t critique your performance during um’more delicate times, ok? He realized that when a woman fights a rosebush, it is between her and the plant. It’s like death and buying swimsuits’ you can really only go down that road by yourself.
Thus, he grabbed a shovel and began to work at digging up some of the trees. The trees had other plans. At one point, he broke the three-inch thick wood handle of a shovel, but luckily we had a spare. The Rosebush struck out at him, ripping an inch of flesh out of his thumb, so we took a break and drank Diet Pepsi’s in the garage while listening to the Badger game.
‘I can’t believe that thing is so huge now. I mean, I cut a bunch off this spring with Mom.’
‘I cut a bunch off this summer while I was mowing too.’
‘I can’t believe the land is so fertile! It’s like, you could grow a cure for cancer back there.’
‘Yeah, but it would probably invade your body and make you grow thorns.’
‘And that stump’ I think the roots went all the way down to hell itself. Those were Lucifer’s trees.’
‘I can get that big stump out, but it will kill the rosebush.’
‘I think you’re not giving that bush enough credit. I doubt anything could kill it. I think it might be the Undead. The Undead Rosebush. How’s your thumb?’
‘It hurts like hell. It probably left a poison in my body and it’s going to rot off.’
‘Or make you evil. EEEEEVIL! If you turn into a plant, I promise to water you every day, sweetie.’
And so it went. I put two winter cap things on the Lazarus Jackson & Perkins and the heartier of the three offshoots. I hacked down two of the smaller shoots into nothing. Winter will probably kill them. I was satisfied that the original Rosebush was tamed, although I ended up destroying the ancient trellis in the process. Next spring, I’m going to trellis the entire back of the garage and grow roses there. Apparently, they like it.
Sometimes, you just have to go with the natural order of things.
And maybe I’m a little afraid of it. Maybe.
