a victory any way I can get it

I love my yard; it’s huge, but most of the space is taken up by either grass, gravel, enormous trees or rhododendron bushes. The best and most sunny garden space is in the front yard, along a fence in a nice bed about four feet wide by twelve feet long. When I moved in it was filled with bushes that someone had obviously planted to fill the space. They are maintenance free extra thick bushy bushes. They are green, bushy, and I think they might turn colors in the fall. Other than being busy (did I mention they are bushy) they don’t necessarily merit much description. I decided that this space was much too valuable to fill with uninteresting bushy bushes.

Last week, I yanked the first two out. It took a little while and for most of it I had an audience. Across the street from me is a tri-plex structure, with two properties in front and one in the back. I’m not entirely sure who lives in the back but both units in the front have interesting characters. On the left are Lana and Dave. I think she is a stripper, and I’m really not joking. If not a stripper, than an aspiring one, or a proponent of stripper heels for all occasions. I’m not sure. I have no idea what Dave, her boyfriend, does other than wonder around in a white boy gangster getup. But, they both wave back at me and have attempted to plant vegetables and lay bark in a small strip of a garden in the concrete wasteland in front of their house. They also hung a large pot of hot pink petunias, so they can’t be all bad. But, neither of them were my audience.

Next to them, is, as they informed me, Annie, a very young very pregnant mother of three kids all under 8. Chloe, Skylar, and Kaden. Living in the same household is a big-titted pitt bull who wanders the neighborhood pooping at will and a young pit bull named Tank. A puppy and a baby, what is this woman thinking? According to approximately four-year-old Kaden (who has a slight speech impediment which led me to think the puppy’s name was Taint for a few days), Tank is a bad puppy. “He bites.” Kaden explained as the fawn colored puppy gnawed on my fingers. Why yes, he does.

Kaden was my audience. The two boys are a bit wild, both are super cute and have pierced ears and coast down the hill at scary speeds. I have observed them kicking at a bucket screaming, “Shit, shit, shit.” I assumed there was a spider or something equally worthy of profanity in the bottom of the bucket. I have taken to talking to Kaden who watches everything I do with an air of amused superiority. I was hacking at the bushes and he was riding up and down the street.

I pruned the leaves and branches back so that I could figure out how big the base of this plant really was and then started digging. I dug, lifted, dug, pulled, lifted, and dug for about 10 minutes. I was having very little luck. Kaden had stopped his bike on the street and was watching me. I pulled again to no avail. He was watching me, bemused.

“You think I’ll be able to do it?” I asked.

His grin was infectious and innocent. He shook his head, “No, you’re not strong enough.”

I had just been called out by someone barely out of diapers. He flexed his arm. “I’m strong enough.”

I bet you are kid. I dug, and lifted, and tugged some more and the whole thing came out. The solo member of the peanut gallery giggled and rode off.

In your face four-year-old.