“This is the Root of your family. Plant it… it will grow.” … “But I don’t know how!” – A Walk in The Clouds

So here’s a story for your, um, amusement! This is quite different from my usual blog entry, but I thought I’d share it with you anyway. For those of you who do not know, I have a 3.5 acre property that requires a lot of attention. There’s always something to be done, weeds to attend to, fruit trees to look after, fences to fix or leave broken as the mood takes me (the neighbor and I call the broken ones ‘deer gates’ since the deer frequent the same areas to jump through). But the work is never ending and I was feeling energetic yesterday, though what I really wanted to do was put on my bathing suit, pull out a raft and float around the pool for a couple of hours and listen to some music with a good book. But… I decided to put the bathing suit on, grab my electric trimmers and get to work instead! So, here we go….my friend Enrico would call me la contadina! That would be translated as the female farmer in Italian, mmm… yeah, ok. Thanks, Enrico!

Imagine this (you need a visual)…I’m out on the property yesterday working on trimming up some of the shrubs with my electric trimmers..looks kind of like a chain saw, but not so brutal…in my multicolored hot pink and blue bikini, of course… what else would you be trimming shrubs with power tools in? The neighbors get a kick out of watching me do yard work, by the way. I’m just buzzing away at this GIANT dwarf japanese maple bush… hey.. wait a minute… that’s an oxymoron. I have yet to figure out, why this ‘dwarf’ bush is GIANT every year, when I bought it because it is supposed to be a ‘dwarf’ bush and put it by the swimming pool thinking it will never grow more than 3 or 4 feet tall! Heck no!!! It’s about 6 feet tall every year and the same around in width! I’m feeling real powerful and I tackled that GIANT dwarf and I showed it who was boss!!! you can now see the 3 little frogs underneath it again!! YAY!! But at some point, I remember there are two dead cherry trees out in the back field that I want to uproot and I head out there to pull them out of the ground…

So off I go, in my little hot pink bikini….and sandals, and I grab the work gloves… ahem.. what a sight I am, huh?

And I get to the cherry trees proceed to do this little push and pull number on the first dead tree…I remember seeing how this is done at the end of a movie.. A Walk In the Clouds.. Keanu Reeves saunters through the smoke up to the very first vine that the Aragon family had planted in the vineyard. Anthony Quinn showed it to him earlier in the movie and explained the history of how it was brought over from their country to here, and all of the grapes were originated from this main vine… all that history, in this one crotchety vine!!! Ah… the roots were important … this is where it all begins!!! Anyway, Keanu gets to work pulling out the burned up original grave vine… his muscles are all taught and beautiful, he’s pushing the vine, he’s pulling on it…the sweat is pouring off of him and mixing with all of the dirt and soot from the fire that burned through the vineyard through the night… and finally, that last push and…. ahhhh!.. (hmmm it’s almost like sex watching him do that scene!!!) What a beautiful creature … oh, sorry, let me get back to my story! ahem!!…

So there I am, doing my best impression of Keanu Reeves, pushing and pulling on the first cherry tree. I’m pushing this way, pull that way, tugging.. one more push and……. and YES! the first one comes up out of the ground!… I am breathing a little heavy, I’m sweating a little bit… I toss the tree off to the side, and my testosterone is pumped up!… I’m feeling pretty darn good about myself, indeed I am! So, I move on to the next one.

I start pushing and pulling again. Ok, this one’s roots are deep!! Ah… like the movie, in my head I’m thinking of all of those marvelous quotes “This… is the root of your family… plant it, it will grow!”… how I always laugh at that one when Keanu says, “But I don’t know how!” Is he in Paul Sutton character? Because he really sounds more like Alex Winter in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and at any moment he might say… Woa!,… or maybe, it’s the Matrix and he might say “I know Kung Fu”… Sorry, I digress again!….. so there I am, …. I’m pushing and pulling and the sweat is really starting to get me… I grunt and push harder and….. SNAP!!! the trunk breaks and—- there I go, ass over head, tumbling over onto the grass, half a tree and some twigs in my hair, legs in the air and land on my back about 5 feet away. HRUMPH!!! At this point I’m laughing hysterically. The root of my family?!!! I don’t think so!! I’ve got twigs in my hair, grass and dirt all over me and a tick crawling up my arm… life is good! I don’t think I looked very much like Keanu Reeves with his rippling muscles at that point!

I wonder if the neighbors saw me? If they didn’t they probably hear me laughing a mile away! Thank goodness for the large acre lots we all have! We have a lot of privacy from each other and pretty much don’t see each other unless we really want to! Whew!!! I’m sure that was NOT a pretty sight!

Well, I gave up for the day and headed back out there with the shovel today and didn’t quit until that thing was out! I was determined to conquer to dreaded cherry tree and I did it. I feel.. empowered! Unlike my feeling of total foolishness butt end in the air with a cherry tree in my hair yesterday. Ahhh… the life of “la contadina” and the root of her family. Let’s see, how does that translate in Italian…. “la radice della vostra famiglia”

Ciao, Toné