The Pruning

By Jim Hagarty

We had a nice long autumn last year and I got well caught up on my yard work.

I trimmed all our perennial flowers right down to ground level. I worried all winter long that I had been too brutal in my pruning. Would the lilies and iris and phlox even come back at all in the spring?

They did come back and are more beautiful than they have ever been.

It occurs to me it doesn’t hurt for humans to be cut down to size now and then too.

Doesn’t hurt us at all.

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.