Lopping is meditative yard work. It is simple, straight forward, and – paradoxically – both relaxing AND tiring.
I am dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with knee pads strapped on. In my gloved hands I carry both a lopper as well as a pruner, for smaller branches. A straw hat protects my bald head as I work my way into a large, overgrown section of a growth of some prolific bush I can’t even name. Bandito, the front porch cat, who is a bruiser I call “Big Boy,” follows me out and gets in the way, desperate for some petting.
One of my most essential tools is a wheelbarrow. After several years of a constantly deflating tire, I finally found someone who could patch it successfully. As I lop, I toss the cuttings into the wheelbarrow. Eventually, I end up wheeling six loads to my ever-growing debris pile.

There is a stump protruding from the ground near where I am working. Before I quit for lunch, I trip over it at least six or eight times. Finally, having had enough, I head to the shed to get the axe. I’m taking that thing OUT, I say to myself, but the axe is nowhere to be found. I take this mystery philosophically. After all, as I said at the start, this is meditative exertion, and as I wind up the morning labor, I am approaching enlightenment. The Zen of lopping has put me into a state of tired satisfaction. A large glass of iced tea with lime awaits me.