imaginary dinner conversations

D:  What did you do today, dear, while our sweet child was in school?

C:  Why, thank you for asking me.  I tidied up the back and front gardens and coppiced the artemisia.

D:  Oh marvelous!  You really do keep the gardens looking nice, sweetheart.

In reality, though, I pretty much hacked the artemisia down to a nubby stub and ripped out the bittercress like a crazed woman, dirt flying everywhere.

Also, in reality, D and I don't have dinner conversations.  We are tired, forty-something parents, and we just grunt at one another in the evenings.

I find gardening language amusing sometimes, though.  Coppicing is a way of managing thickets, shrubs, and forests by cutting back plants so that new growth is stimulated.  Artemisias get leggy like some willows so it's how I keep ours round and fluffy.  But a garden writer would never say, "Just hack it down to the stub every January."  I wonder if garden writers are squeamish or if they never take delight in the destructive side of gardening.  It's good therapy for me, and today was my very first chance of the year to hack away at something.  More to come!  Goody goody.