It seemed like a good idea, just a couple snips here and there to straighten out the disappearing border. I got out the hedge shears and took a couple swipes.

Our house was remodeled a good decade ago. During that project, a planting area was created in the front of the house adjacent to the entry door. At that time we bought about five pots of a green vine which I call "myrtle" but which the Master Gardner in our house calls woody euonymus.

A decade is a long time for a creeper plant to have its own way. Way too long it turns out.

"I'd really like to just get rid of it all," my wife said to me as I innocently snipped away. I was trying to square off the growth with the side of the sidewalk. "I'd really like to just pull it all out."

"All of it, just out?"

I eyed the project set out before me. The area measures about 8 wide by 20 feet long.

The day was young, the air was that wonderful combination of summer/autumn that smells and feels fresh and energetic.

Why not?

First we pulled, then we dug, then things got ugly.

I got in the planting bed with the push mower to at least mulch up the vines. The vines fought back. It was kind of a science fiction type struggle of orderly good versus an evil entanglement.

Eventually we were reduced to sitting in the moist earth and digging, pulling, and snipping little bits of any of the vine that would yield. It was a pathetic kind of gardener's surrender.

We left the garden bed in defeat, packed up our shovels and rakes and every form of cutting tool imaginable. Unspoken between us were visions of commercial tillers, earth moving equipment, toxic chemicals.

Time will tell. Our reward was a lunch of bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Oh my. I ask you, does any form of cuisine get better than that? Whole wheat bread slightly toasted. Lettuce, as crisp as it was green. Bacon, four strips arranged in perfect parallel. And the tomatoes, red, ripe, juicy, home grown.

A perfect lunch in the late afternoon of a holiday has a disorienting effect on me. You think there's more holiday left, more energy remaining, more accomplishment to be, well, accomplished.

"Sure, we can wash some windows."

Was that actually me answering that question in the affirmative?

When one washes windows in the big city there is one prominent issue to be dealt with: grime. Grime is an oily, greasy film that settles evenly on window panes and which must be removed with paper towels and a spray bottle of glass cleaner. It takes a little muscle and a little perseverance, but it is a fairly accomplishable task.

In the country, glass cleaning involves an advanced degree in entomology. How else is one to deal with the upset you reek on the mud wasp nests, the spider lures, the breeding gounds, not to mention the extensive bug cemeteries one encounters when washing windows in the country?

We started with a vacuum, hot ammonia water and a razor blade scrapper. The paper towels and squirt bottle, those are merely finishing up supplies in the country.

In the city when you open a window there may be an occasional bug stuck in the sash. In the country there is the guarantee of assorted colonies of flying and crawling things, some alive, some dead. And then there are the "dots" all over - stuff of which I don't even want to know the origin. Latin translation: Creepis Leftoverus.

In the end the windows were shining, our arms aching, and our view improved. We both agreed to skip cleaning the windows which overlook the myrtle/euonymous patch. For the moment, ignorance of how that evil vine plans on regrouping seemed the more pleasant plan.