Won't You Bee My Neighbor

So I step out into the jungle that I call a yard to survey the "opportunities" up close. I have one dead not-so-evergreen bush creating a fire hazard next to a much taller evergreen and some peonies. I can hack away at that for fun, but I'll need Scott's big manly truck and hitch and whatever other magic tools he has to get the stump out of the ground. With my luck, the stump is so deep it has grown under the house, which will probably cave into the hole I leave behind. Oh good. More to look forward to.

The lilac "tree" looks like it might actually muster the strength to bloom this year. It has been either too weak or too pissed for years now. The summer before my divorce having been the last time it flowered and filled the air with fresh fragrant loveliness. Lars decided it was "out of control" (as if that weren't the pot calling the kettle black..." that year and hacked it to collops one day while I was at the pool with the kids daydreaming about murdering him in his sleep while I worked on a savage tan. I've heard lilacs hold a grudge. Grudgy Wudgy hasn't bloomed since, but it appears to have buds. Maybe if I pretend not to be overjoyed it will go through with it.

My magnolia tree is lush and green. The unseasonably warm weather and lack of frost has forced it to bloom well ahead of schedule, but it is in full leaf. It has bloomed, wilted and dropped its petals all before April began. I have photographs of the kids on Mothers Days past that picture the tree in glorious full bloom. In May.

It has also sprouted new branch growth. Some of which I am not thrilled about due to how low the branches are. I can just see clotheslining myself while mowing my lawn. One branch has fallen from the tree entirely, and I am almost compelled to preserve it for the memory it holds. It is one of my favorites.

When Hil and Pat were very little, maybe two and three years old, Lars and I took them outside to play in our little sandbox under the magnolia while we did a little manual yard work. No mowing or leaf blowing. Raking and weed pulling. Lars was never voluntarily going to buy a piece of equipment that would do what his wife could do for free (Now, that didn't sound right at all.) Anyway, gardening gloves on, we were busy raking while the kids made sand castles and rubbed sand into each other's scalps.

Lars kept stopping and asking about some buzzing sound he was hearing. I on the other hand, heard no buzzing. I never even looked his way the first few times. But he kept stopping and asking, like a raving lunatic, "Don't you hear that buzzing sound?"

Finally, I responded by looking up and starting to say, "Maybe you need your head examined," and I saw it.

"It" being the basketball-sized wasp nest dangling from the low branch of the magnolia a mere 12 inches above Lars' head. I looked at him for a moment, soaking in the scene. It was like those National Geographic still photos of the shark flying out of the water with his mouth open and teeth showing and just a split second from chomping down on the poor unsuspecting seal.

He looked at me quizzically. The wicked part of me wanted to suggest that he do a few jumping jacks to clear his head and make sure he rigorously clapped his hands above his head. But for the children's safety, and a need to avoid eternal damnation, I refrained. Reluctantly.

I very quietly told him to just slowly walk toward me and to pick up one of the children while I picked up the other and walked toward the entrance to the house. I told him not to look back, for fear that he would Lot's Wife and turn to salt or stone or some other immobilized thing and become a meal for 1,000 wasps.

But he did, and freaked out. And scared the children. And to this day Hil has a mortal fear of bees. Or anything resembling a bee. Even if it is just an airborne dust bunny. Such is the permeating overreactive paranoia that is Lars.

But now Lars is gone and the tree remains. No wasps having come home to roost since.

I suppose they are building a nest at Lars's house. Just for fun.