Ah spring! The season of the year when man ventures out into his yard to conquer the wild onions, rip out the crown vetch, and whack the daylights out of everything that even looks like it might need pruning.

He means well. He’s only doing what he witnessed his old man doing when he was a kid. But he is lost and all I can say is, “poor plants.”

I have a great deal of sympathy for the plants during the spring war season. It’s not that I’m high-falut’n or mister-know-it-all when it comes to yard work. I’ve just paid attention to a few episodes of Walter Reeve’s Georgia Gardener. Anybody that wants to know, can know.

Those that don’t know go blindly into battle leaving devastation in their wake.

My dad was the major general of the yard wars. His strategy was simple. If it was too big, cut it back. If it was too wild, shear it into a ball. If it bore fruit, spray it until it dripped to the ground in puddles of Captan, Malathion, and Diazinon. It’s a wonder I don’t have a mutated third eyeball in the middle of my forehead.

Growing up, we had a Holly right next to the step to the front porch at my house. I had no clue back then, but I recognize now that it was a Dwarf Burford. And when I say right next to the step, I’ll talking in “inches” not feet.

I’m certain this bush came from Dorsey’s Nursery up in Lovejoy. If Mama didn’t root it in a Mason jar in the kitchen window, and it was planted in our yard, then it came from Dorsey’s.

I’m certain that what appealed to my dad was the word “dwarf” in the name on the little card tied to the plant. It looked small. They all do in a one-gallon container. It would be perfect for a spot right beside the front step.

“What do you think, Helen?” Dad would sometimes defer to my mama when it came to yard plants. Squash and corn and purple hull peas, he knew. Yard plants fell under her tutelage.

“It says ‘dwarf’, so it should work.” She was duped. “It’s cute.”

This is one of the mistakes that trap the uninformed. If only Mama had watched episode 47 from the archives of Walter Reeves, she would have known better. But, alas, good old Walter wasn’t around when this decision was made.

My advice? When you venture out to the local plant sale this spring and you see the word “dwarf” on a plant tag, ask this question: Dwarf compared to what? A battleship?

You see, Burford Holly is a beast. Callaway Gardens is covered up with Burford Holly. They can reach up to 18ft to 20ft in height and 25ft in spread. In the right place, they are dense, deep green, covered with bright red berries and are perfect for blocking the view from your porch to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.

So, when you encounter a “dwarf” one of these, remember that dwarf is relative. Dward Burford can grow to 10-12ft in height and 15ft in spread. It’s smaller than the real deal. It is a dwarf compared to the big boy. But it will eat your gutter and push up under the edge of your roof shingles if you plant it right next to the front step to your house.

I’m not sure why Dad didn’t put a chain around it and pull it out of the ground with the tractor. Count your loss. Consider your mistake, and just move on with something else in that spot.

But that wasn’t him. About every three or four years he would attack that poor Holly. There was no tip pruning. No thinning cuts. Reduction cuts were not in his vocabulary. There was nothing short of brutal in his method of dealing with this bush.

His “go-to” pruning tool was his Poulan chain saw. In case you didn’t know, the cutting chain on a saw like this is made for ripping out large chunks of wood. There is no such thing as a smooth cut. Dad would reach into the dense growth low on one side, find one of the trunks, and in three minutes the whole thing is lying on the ground like a beached whale.

It would sprout out by late spring. In two years, it would start to look decent again. By the fourth year we had a beached whale on our front yard again. This cycle repeated as long as he lived.

Sometimes it feels like a curse to have worked with plants. A guy who paints houses sees houses differently than I do. He can’t help himself. He sees the flaws. He sees the stupid choices. He lies awake at night and thinks about wanting to take the paint brush away from his neighbor.

I’m not really that bad about spring, but Marion is testing my ability to keep things civil.

The very first time I went to her house in Newnan I saw these pitiful, poor, suffering, abused and sad little things along her front porch that used to be shrubs.

“What happened to your shrubs?” I was certain some maniac had secretly and viciously run over her bushes with his lawn mower.

“I cut ‘em back. Why?”

“Did they do something to offend you?”

She didn’t get my humor. “No, they were too tall.”

“They only get to be 3ft tall.”

“Well, I want them to be 2ft tall.”

“Then why are they six inches tall?”

“Because I was tired of cutting them all the time.”

“There are other, more humane solutions, ya know.”

“Look,” she says, “my philosophy is simple. If they live, they live. If they die, they die. I don’t care.”

Right then and there, I knew this relationship was going to be a challenge. This is the same woman who cut a mature Japanese Maple to the ground in the heat of a squirrel war. I don’t know what we’ve both gotten ourselves into, but if we get through spring, we might have a chance of making it.

She made little round meatballs out of her yellow bells (Forsythia) recently. When I noticed it, I was a gentleman and did not say a word. I wanted to go find her shears and bury them in a shallow grave, but I resisted.

Then the other day she commented on how much the yellow bells at my house are blooming, and how hers never seem to flower as much as others she sees around. She says that hers flower late, too, way later than all the others in the area.

I was listening. I was taking this all in. I could’ve let it go.

“I have an idea.” My strategy was to overwhelm her with kindness.

“What’s that?”

“Do you suppose it might have something to do with the way you prune them?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You made little round balls out of them at the wrong time of year.”

She smiles and lowers her eyes. “My plants, my way.”

Oh, the battle is real.