Condo Clean-Up Day: The Birth Of A Serial Shrubbery Shredder

Yesterday was our semi-annual condominium clean-up day, where residents pitch in to make the grounds more attractive.

I intended to spend the day as Dena's wingman in hedge trimming all day. Within five minutes, I realized that with only one trimmer there was more downtime than efficiency could justify. Maximizer that I am, I sullied over to the fence bordering the driveway and began sweeping leaves, rocks, dust and the occasional wrapper into attractive piles and scooping them into coffin-sized black plastic bags using a dwarf-sized dust pan.

Contrary to what you hear on CNN, pebbles do not sweep easily. In fact they behave similarly to a roomful of puppies when you ask them to please quiet down. In theory one attempt could suffice; in reality it requires exactly 17 attempts to move them three feet. I recognized this to be a character-building exercise, a test of my grit. Could I finish what I started, even if it had all the finest qualities of Chinese water torture? The answer, in the end, was I don't know. I blacked out from oxygen debt caused by all the weeping somewhere around the millionth broom stroke (reminder to self: write strongly-worded letter to the driveway-brush industry).

When I came to, the driveway was much cleaner, which I chose to mean that I had finished the task. I then headed into the courtyard to decipher the meaning of the loud buzzing coming from within. One of my 76-year-old neighbors (Yes, I have multiple. And yes, it gives me a false sense of youth.) was using a pair of electric hedge trimmers to go after a monstrously overgrown bush. After a few minutes of picking up her bush-droppings (there must be a better way to phrase this) she realized that I was half her age and asked if I'd like to trim for a while.

When I squeezed the trigger and it roared to life, I became a new man. Instantly connecting to universal masculinity, having a power tool in my hand opened a new region of my brain, namely the one that likes to destroy stuff with a demented grin etched on my face. After wallowing for eternity in the pebble trail of tears, this sense of productivity was as addictive as s'mores. Within twenty minutes I'd left a swath of dead and living foliage debris in my wake that the seventysomethings were straining to keep pace with bagging. I can't prove beyond reasonable doubt that they stepped on the cord a few times to disconnect the power. But I do know that in six months I'll be racing them to the shed (a brisk walking pace should do it) for dibs on the thresher.