Thursday, February 24, 2005
Hieronymus Hedge
Out of my window there is an obstructive square block of green taking up fifty percent of my view. It is the Sky scraper of hedges, the monster of home gardening. The house to which this solid block of weed mass fronts is only of secondary importance to the overshadowing monolith that reaches up to its first floor windows. This chopped and chiselled prickly wall is presently being given a short back and sides by a team of landscape gardeners. Two trucks are needed for the clippings. Huge industrial saws and a giant sucking hose attached to a battery pack for collecting the bits. The men dwarfed by their task. Just giving it a light clipping. I was thinking that they might want to chop the whole thing down. Perhaps they would need permission to do that though. The next door neighbours to be evacuated to safer housing, that sort of thing. They must need a construction crane to clip the top. I have never seen it done though and it always seems to appear quite neat and tidy. I can imagine it done by the occupants holding giant shears out of the upstairs windows. They could be growing it big in order to cut it into an extravagant shape to impress in a hedge competition? It has a small front garden and they can’t fit many cars behind it, the rest of the garden laying bare. Perhaps it costs less to shave it down occasionally than to have it chopped down. I’m not looking forward to the day that they decide to chop it. I could’t stand all the upheaval. To suddenly see the image of that house and those people and their windows facing me would make me feel as though I had an audience watching me all the time, through the large door windows that run along the side of my lounge! Presently I have a cosy forest green view, a blank space to hide behind in the morning when I get up and have to open the curtains. Everybody mentions the hedge when they visit my flat: “My god, what’s that?” when first entering the room facing.
The figure of the hedge looms large in this small town, overlooking all the houses near by. The day it is finally sawn down will seem like the end to an era. I have grown comfortable with it. The security it gives me. Allowing me to wander about my flat while not being self-conscious or effected in any way.
