My husband Andy and I are sitting on our old wooden chairs on opposite sides of the wobbly table in our front garden. Our eyes are following the bees which are buzzing around the white flowers that stud the tall bushes that shield us from the road.
”The bushes are growing out of control,” observes Andy. “I’ll have to trim them.”
“Don’t cut them back too much,” I say quickly. “We don’t want to lose our privacy.”
I’m about to say more, but then I stop. I remember the last time Andy pruned the bushes in our front garden.
One spring day, several years ago, I noticed that the bushes alongside our house were growing out of control. We’d planted the bushes to form a neat head-high hedge but instead, they’d broken free and had shot towards the sky. Branches were dangling over our gutters.
”We need to cut back the hedge,” I said to Andy. “It’s touching our house and is a fire risk. We should get our home ready for the bushfire season.”
After saying this, I disappeared inside my computer to write a blog post.
A short time later, Andy popped his head around the door of our bedroom, where I was sitting at my desk, and said, “Can you come and look at the bushes? How much do you want me to cut off?”
“Whatever you think,” I muttered, waving my fingers at Andy who shrugged and left me to my writing.
A couple of hours passed. I finished my blog post, and then stood up and stretched and wondered how Andy was getting on. I headed outside and discovered him in the front garden, shears in his hands.
”I thought you were pruning the hedges that were overhanging the house,” I said. ‘What are you doing here in the front garden?”
”I thought these bushes needed trimming too.”
I looked at Andy’s work and cried, ”You haven’t trimmed. You’ve hacked the bushes to pieces. They look terrible!”
Andy dropped his shears to the ground and said, “You could have come and told me what you wanted me to do. I did ask you.”
I knew I’d already said too many wrong words but somehow, a few more fell from my lips: “It’ll take a long time for the bushes to recover.”
Andy’s face tightened. I glared at him. Sparks shot between us. And then I ran away.
I ran into the house, grabbed a leash and Nora, and then I set off for the bush. I marched along the tracks, scattering stones with my feet, the dog scurrying to keep up. Pound. Pound. Pound. Down the hill. When we reached the bottom, we marched back up again. Why? Why? Why? Why did Andy hack the bushes to pieces? And then as I emerged from under the trees, my anger drained away, and my pace slowed. What was I getting so upset about? Did it really matter?
When I arrived back at our house, I averted my eyes from the scene of destruction. I walked through the front door and opened my mouth. But before I could say anything, Andy said, “Sue, I’m sorry. I should have waited until you had time to come outside and tell me what to do. I interrupted you at the wrong time. It was my fault.”
“No, it was my fault,” I said. “I’m sorry. I should have left my computer. I shouldn’t have complained.”
“I made a real mess of the garden, didn’t I?”
”You did! That’s the worst hair cut that I’ve ever seen.”
Suddenly, it all seemed very funny. Tears of laughter rolled down our faces.
”What will the neighbours think?”
”Who cares?!”
I’m still thinking about that spring day, remembering how Andy had gone mad with his shears and how I’d got mad with him, when my husband says, “If we don’t prune the bushes back, they’ll grow too tall. They’ll become trees and they’ll be no leaves down below to screen our house from the road.”
Andy is right. “Cut them back as much as you want,” I say. “I won’t complain.”
And I won’t. Bushes are like hair. They grow back. A bad hair cut doesn’t last forever.
But love does if we are quick to apologise and forgive each other.
At the end of our road, hidden behind a bushy garden, is our house. The bushes aren’t evenly trimmed. But who cares? My love pruned those bushes. He cut them back for me.
Photo: This is Andy, but he’s not sitting in our garden. Those hedges are much too neat to be ours!
