Cut down to size

I have a hunch that if there had been hydrangeas around in the time of Christ, there might have been a parable woven around the pruning of same. I've just finished pruning the second of the massive and elderly bushes in our garden - they were there when we bought the house 33 years ago, and they looked much the same then as they do now. Pruning is always the same. I find a new shoot 'way down a sturdy branch and immediately cut just above it. I watch with awe as the tiny sprout lengthens and grows; last year they grew a full three feet over the summer. I feel excited (well - not wildly, but this is a story) about new growth on old wood, even though I know it will not flower this season. And then I forget about it ...

..Until the following Spring. And the shoots which gave me such a buzz (relatively speaking) are now silly long, bendy boughs with a stupid tuft of leaves at the top, blackened no doubt by late frosts, and I cut them down to within an inch of their lives. Again, they won't flower this year. If I go on like this they will never flower. They will always be new and leafy until they turn into over-long woody monstrosities which I demolish altogether. And there will once more be a huge pile of cut branches to remove to the recycling.

Actually, I hate my hydrangeas and I loathe pruning them. But I couldn't help making mental parallels as I grunted and hacked away. Too much lay training, I reckon, is bad for a seasonal gardener.

Joys of Spring

Not one of my best efforts, this photo, but full of Spring nonetheless, in the ?person? of a scarpering bee, which until I approached with my phone was busily doing what bees do in the catkins whose furriness matched his/her own. (I think I ought not to anthropomorphise a bee, but once you start ...) Anyway, it was a glorious afternoon; the temperature climbed, albeit briefly, into double figures, and I found myself tempted to enjoy the late afternoon sun with a little pruning. Bad move. The sun sets and you're left chilled and stabbed with tiny prickles as you collect the debris. But I feel that pruning is something that lets you be outside purposefully at this time of year - maybe one of the reasons why I don't do it in November.

It was a good day in another way. The young woman who was at the checkout in the supermarket (a) packed my bags as she scanned them through (this happens elsewhere, but seldom in our local) and (b) told me that I was responsible for her wanting to write. She'd been in my class at some point - I could remember her, but recall a sullen indifference, studiously maintained. Now she's a smiling and helpful person with the confidence to pay a spontaneous compliment. Some days I used to moan that teaching was a mug's game. Not today.