Pull Not Down Thy Hedge

We have hedges. And despite the cute Ron Jeremy fantasy perception of hedges and their inhabitants, hedges take some work.

In the tradition of naming my household and garden implements after Tolkien references, behold Narsil, the Hedge Trimmer. Narsil, a Bosch AHS 52 Accu, was brought in to handle our unruly hedges. Fifty-two centimeters of laser cut blades and two 14.4 volt batteries, providing 55 minutes of hedge trimming fervor each, have brought my abilities up to Edward Scissorhands status. I went with the cordless variety with the hopes that if we ever leave the Land of Rain, we can simply get a different charger to keep using it (unlike the appliances we bought.) I also had a crippling fear of slicing through the cord of a corded variety.

The first hedge pic is a naughty hedge. It is growing every which way with no regard for the aesthetics of our garden. It taunts me and makes a mockery of the well kept grass. It must be tamed.

The procedure is simple. Insert battery in Narsil, lay blanket under hedge (saves on clean up time), and attack with hedge trimmer. Narsil makes short work of hedge branches up to 15mm thick. It can also quickly chop through a bob wire fence when one gets ones Narsil too close to it (oops!) Unfortunately, I am alone in my blogging today so I am unable to provide an action shot.

Now, here we have nice tidy hedge that has been taken down a notch. If a branch had some desire to stick out from the pack, it was chopped off. We have no room for individuality in this yard. Everything is right again.

In a few days of sporadic on and off trimming -- it has rained on and off for going on 2.5 years here now -- I have accumulated mountains of hedge trimmings. The trimmings apparently are like crack for slugs, which have moved in to the pile in droves. I need to call on the neighbors to see if I can add my slug nest to their burn pile. I suppose this is a detail I should have worked out ahead of time but once I had the Narsil, "reason" took a brief holiday.