My summer project, aka Avoiding the Revision, is clearing some brush out back. Full of creepers, vines, and Poison ivy, I have been donning long sleeves and gloves, and applying a newly acquired set of lopers to the woods. I now understand how the pioneers must have felt felling trees to create homesteads. The sound of the lopers cutting through branches and roots is chillingly satisfying. I barely made a dent, despite filling a garbage bin half-dozen times to lug to the compost pile. Still, when I raked a narrow edge in the woods to reveal leaf mold and dirt, I was thrilled. There is now a small, liberated wild honeysuckle tree. The thorny vines that were not roses that were never to be roses, are cut and release their grasp on the flowering trees.
I envision native plants: trilliums, mallow, maybe woodland bulbs. What I’d like to is create a small oasis for the eyes, hang trailing flowers from the dead tree limbs, scatter bluebells and lily of the valley at ground level. A hammock and a book could be very nice. Why, one could even revise there.