Juniper Order (Ranger)

I spent a good part of the afternoons hacking through the green tendrils of the juniper bushes outside of my house. I cannot fully explain my compulsion to keep work on these plants. Living in a San Diego summer and in benign neglect, these plants have thrived in spite of our perpetual refusal to take care of our plants. These juniper bushes are a hardy bunch that lives on the heat of the afternoon and an occasional sprinkling of water when we remember. The cutting and shaping of these plants could easily be done by one of the many gardening services available to people in our position. Perhaps my parents never fully adjusted to paying for landscaping. It would have been of relatively little notice if I had chosen to ignore our frontal plants and let them overtake the garden.
In the past years, the shaping and maintenance of these plants fell to my grandfather, who used to work in gardening. However, as he as grown older, the bushes returned to their natural, if uncontrolled, state. Plants that should be neat little green balls unfurl their long fingers, grasping for new lands to tame. It has been much time since I can remember spherical juniper bushes in front of my house. I dragged out a menancing pair of clippers and a few other necessary, though less theatrical tools. The first plant I worked on did not make the neat ball, but instead a misshapen oval, a Baroque pearl in our midst. The long neglect of the plants had made hacking the plants down to a manageable size a handful, not to mention even shaping them into the appropriate spheres. I suppose given enough time and desire, recreating the ideal shapes of the past would have been possible. But the sun was shining. And the newly hacked bush was cut with a nice bend that followed the path of our walkway. The new shape seemed to better harmonize with its environment. And so I went on carving Baroque pearls into the other plants in our front yard.