The family who lived in our apartment before us dug a small garden around the back patio. This spring the garden was quite amusing for me because all these different bulb flowers that were planted by the folks before us kept blossoming. That was a surprise. But now that it is summer, the garden has become fairly annoying. It is always full of weeds, and there is this one enormous overgrown bush taking over the patio that I sort of despise. The renters before us must have planted the bush as well, because none of the other back patios are landscaped. I think the bush is ridiculous. Surely they planted it to create a barrier to block their view of the Fischer’s Foods parking lot across the way. Perhaps this worked at one time, but by now the bush is so large that it engulfs half of the patio and drops little seedlings all over the place. And honestly, bush or no bush, I can still tell that there is an unsightly grocery store trash compactor next door. Who are you fooling?
Anyway, this afternoon when I got home from school I decided it was finally time to go outside and weed the garden. You would not believe it, but it took me about an hour and I filled three bags with the weeds I pulled. Some of the weeds were stubborn and I had to dig them out with a shovel, but after I was finished it looked pretty good.
Fast forward to dinner. John asks me what I did today, and I proudly tell him that I weeded the garden when I got home and now it looks a lot better. I remind him too that there was nothing I could do to improve the awful bush, and that it should just be chopped down. After dinner, I start on the mountain of dishes (spaghetti night will do that, and they had already been piling up from the day before) and John is puttering around collecting assorted items. He heads for the back door, the one that goes out to the patio, and I look up from the sink and say, “What are you doing?” He gives me his most innocent smile and says, “Playing.” In retrospect, I think I should have been more concerned. Way more concerned.
So like ten minutes later, I am working through the dishes when I hear a knock on the sliding glass door. John is in the window, motioning frantically. “What?!” I yell. He opens the glass door. “Come see this! Quick!” I hold up a rubber glove. “Just a minute,” I say, but the door is already sliding shut. I rinse the dishes in the sink and take off the gloves, find my flip flops and stomp outside.
The first thing I saw was a hastily erected fire pit in the grass in our yard. The second thing I saw was that the fire pit was made out of the rock borders lining our garden—the same borders that I had reset and straightened after my weeding only an hour or so ago. The third thing I saw was that the lawn inside the fire pit was blackened and on fire. And the fourth thing I saw was John making the flames bigger and bigger.
Like I said, I should have been more concerned.
“Watch this,” he says, and sprays the fire pit with an aerosol can of Camp Dry, waterproofing spray for hiking equipment. The flames shoot up in the direction of the spray and dance across the yard. He does this like three or four more times before I can bring myself to say anything. I will admit, the flames themselves floating in midair were very cool. I will also admit that nothing else about this spectacle seemed cool in the moment.
Finally I catch my breath and I say, “What are you doing?! You can’t just build a fire anywhere you want to!” John smiles at me with that innocent look again and says, “Look who you are talking to, dear.” I grimace. “You’re burning the grass.” He says, “So? It’s just a little patch.” I throw my arm in the direction of the garden rocks lining his fire pit. “Those are for our garden! I just finished putting them all back up!” Again, he says, “So? It’s all right.” I throw up my hands. “You’re turning them all black!” He dumps another round of Camp Dry on the fire and the flames shoot up again. “I can’t believe what you are doing here,” I say. “It’s fun,” he says. “You are wasting all the Camp Dry!” I say in frustration. “It’s all right,” he says again, “It’s the only thing we have that was flammable.” I am almost beyond words at this point. There really isn’t anything more to say, anyhow. The damage has already been done. I turn around and go back inside the house to finish my dishes.
When John does come in, he throws the now-empty bottle of Camp Dry in the trash. “Is the fire out?” I ask. He nods. “Go throw some water on it,” I say, “Just in case.” He looks at me. ‘The fire is already out.” I throw another dirty dish into the sink. “Do it anyway, just to humor me. Please.” He does this. When he returns, he says he will chop down the bush that I hate. A peace offering.
I continue with the dishes. John disappears to the garage for a time, and then a few minutes later I hear loud hacking noises coming from outside. I try to ignore the noise because I know it means the bush is dying and I feel kind of guilty, but eventually my curiosity gets the best of me. I remove my rubber gloves once again and go outside.
John is hacking the bush’s branches off with a machete. Literally. “I thought you said we had shears,” I say. “We do,” he says, “But this is easier.” Riiiight.
The bush is gone now. John tied the gigantic bundle of branches up with twine and dragged them across the parking lot to the dumpster and tossed them in. That pretty much filled the entire thing. I have a clear view of the Fischer’s parking lot and the trash compactor, and now my patio can once again see the sunlight. Between the remains of hacked-off branches and the charred circle of grass, I guess we are doing pretty well.