Battling honeysuckle, and Beethoven.

Honestly, I do feel I deserve some kind of award. Weekend warrior? No...not that.

It is so oppressively hot and sunny outside that I have decided to come in and ponder the answer to that question on my computer while enjoying some air conditioning.

I'm not sure that my award should be in recognition of my amazonian efforts yesterday so much as for the level of lazy, wishful thinking and neglect that I indulged in for the past seven years. I realize that seven years is a long time to neglect anything, and that a child, pet, houseplant or marriage would be unlikely to survive this sort of treatment. In terms of damage, though, few things can make more progress in that period of time than a savage honeysuckle vine.

When we first bought our home, I was a fearlessly optimistic, strapping gal in my mid-thirties. We still owned and lived in a house in Symmes township while the new one, 25 minutes away, in Wyoming, was being renovated. I put my mural business on hold for a few months and committed to doing as much of the work as I could myself.

The property had been transferred to us in an estate sale. The previous owner, Julia V, a childless widow, had been alone in the house, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, for many years. Once Julia was declared incompetent, her nephew in Virginia arranged for a series of caregivers to look after her and her beloved gardens. I had very limited experience in gardening but Julia had been a master gardener and had poured her love and passion for flowers into her gardens. This property, our new home, now inspired me to step up and do some fast, hands-on learning. The younger kids were in half day pre-school and I was shuttling them to drop and retrieve Max at an endless sequence of lessons and rehearsals, so my time was very limited, but still, I managed to do an admirable job clearing the perimeter of the lot of nearly all its weeds. In the process, I uncovered some peony plants and daffodils and happily transplanted them to more suitable locations.

Along the way, I distinctly remember spending a couple of overcast days wrestling six and seven foot tall honeysuckle weeds out of the late spring mud. Although the estate had kept a groundskeeping service on payroll to the tune of some $3,000.00 plus a year, certain things had been neglected "backstage" while the tulip beds and rosebushes had been lovingly maintained. The honeysuckle, I was informed by a landscape consultant, would have to be "taken out" or it would take over. In the course of my mud wrestling marathon, the honeysuckle weed that I left for last was on the smaller side, perhaps four or five feet high. Unfortunately, it was relatively inaccessible. Whereas the other plants' greatest challenge had been their extreme proximity to very prickly young holly trees, this one was located in the shelter of several large and low leafed trees. Its roots were practically wedged between two tree trunks, and the ground sloped precipitously toward a collapsed stone retaining wall that was in the process of being rebuilt. Exhausted and otherwise victorious, I decided to leave the baby honeysuckle, for now, and resolved to tackle it another day.

As it turned out, that day rolled around yesterday. The retaining wall was beautifully rebuilt in late 2004; I had no excuse except for about a million other easier, more interesting things to do.

Yesterday, before going at it for several hours with a bow saw and clippers, I had done a deep, thorough clean of the basement playroom and practiced Beethoven's Archduke trio as well as the Bach Double Violin Concerto and Beethoven's 2nd Violin Romance. Well, thank goodness for Beethoven to put things in perspective. Because at the end of the day, when my husband, over a late family dinner at the neighborhood restaurant, asked me what was the hardest work I had done that day, I thought for a moment, and then answered, "in all sincerity, the Beethoven trio".

It's true, but it was a very close call. Certainly the honeysuckle vine had exacted a higher price from me, taken a greater toll My palms were raw from tugging down vine out of the tree tops. I had been smacked in the face by a snapping branch, hit on the back and shoulders and arms by falling limbs. As the vine was forced, bit by bit, to let go its hold, the dead tree bits it had held captive for years came sailing down toward the ground. Each time, I tried to get out of the way, but it was a difficult location in which to move swiftly, surrounded as I was by branches and logs. Some of the falling "bits" were over ten feet long, so it was perilous work.

Once I moved to my neighbor, Vladimir's yard, to rescue his enormous tree from the clutches of my errant honeysuckle, I developed a system of strategically planning which captive limb I would next let fall, and I had yards of open grass across which to scoot out of the way. But that was in the home stretch, around what would normally be dinner time. When I dragged all the debris into our yard, the vine snaked from the top of the back yard down to edge of the sanctuary and firepit at the very bottom - a very, very long way for one little, once easily dismissed, neglected vine.

When I stripped out of my soaking wet, filthy clothes and I was about to step into the shower, I saw myself in the mirror and stppped short. "I look like a warrior," I thought. My face was flushed, bruised, and scraped, with bits of earth and bark stuck to it. My shoulders and upper chest looked similar. My hands were sore and I saw that the skin of my palms and fingers had been pierced in several places.

Today, I have to admit, after a longer than usual night's sleep (8 hours) my hands, back and shoulders are all a bit sore. I still need to clean up our yard from yesterday's battle and drag all my fallen victims into the woods. My afternoon trio rehearsal has just been cancelled suddenly due to an onset of fever in the pianist. I'm very sad about that, but on the other hand, it gives my body a chance to recover before I meet up with Beethoven again.