There are bushes in the backyard. They were planted for two reasons:

  1. They can survive Texas heat.
  2. Deer don’t eat them.

And they’ve grown, remarkably well. Except as they’ve grown, they’ve not been maintained. Just left to their own devices like European kids.

The result has been uneven at best, and now to get the bushes under something like control means they’re going to need to be pruned back, and then as they grow, trimmed in a way that promotes uniform growth.

Bushes, gardens, relationships: they all need tending. Trimming. Left to their own devices, they all end up somewhere other than we thought they’d be.

Sometimes that works. Mostly, it leads to pruning.