Linda Studley

The Caragana Hedge

A Caragana hedge is a fine thing if you need
a fast growing border; a foliage filter to
shut out a less than scenic view or to
break the wind’s stride.

 Our Caragana hedge did none of these things.
Tall, thick and thorny, impassible, impossible
to keep trimmed. It was an illogical barrier
trailing self importantly along the driveway,
the arbitrary divide that cut off my view of the gardens.

Yesterday we took the chainsaw to the caragana
we wore gloves and lined the truck box with a tarp
to protect ourselves and the paint job from clawing branches,
then we hauled them down to the burning pile.
It took four trips. They fought us
and each other going into the truck
but slid out as a solid tangle, clinging to each other.

The Caragana hedge, stumps flush to the ground,
is less than a memory now.
We sit back and look across the yard,
something we’ve never done before, and we ask each other
“Why didn’t we do this years ago?”
“Why didn’t we do this years ago?”

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