The Botanical Enemy

Not only are we not fond of housework, we're also not much on landscaping.  When I give somebody directions to the house, I describe it as "tan brick with an awful lot of overgrown shrubbery."

The crowning jewel of the back yard is an enormous locust tree.  It does a lovely job of shading the house, no doubt lowering our air-conditioning costs.  It also has a nasty habit of sending up new shoots from the surface roots three or four months a year, which would become new trees if we left them alone.  The shoots are tough and sharp and a nuisance to remove - which led to the following conversation:

We are in the kitchen; I am pouring coffee and Mom is gazing out the back door.

Mom: "That damn tree is sending up shoots again."
Me (not really paying attention): "Okay.  What's the best way to get rid of them?"
Mom: "You have to pull them up. If you just mow them, they get all sharp and splintery."
Me: "Yeah, but sometimes the leaves just strip off and you can't get hold of the stem.  What do you do then?  Cut them with the pruning snips?"
Mom: "Well, then you have to use the hatchet."
Me: "Okay.  So, where's the hatchet?"
Mom: "In the bathroom."
Me (after a moment's pause): "You do realize, we're probably the only people on the block who keep a hatchet in the bathroom?"

And then we start laughing hysterically.  It's our latest catch phrase: "Where's the hatchet?"  Guaranteed laughs every time.

I've lived in this house since 1996 - how on earth did I miss noticing a hatchet in the bathroom??

To be fair, it actually lives in the half-bath off the kitchen (which is gray tile and fixtures, not pink), which we don't use as a bathroom because apparently the only way to keep the toilet from running all the time is to shut the water off altogether.  When we called the plumbing company about it, they sent out a kid who looked to be about 24.  He took the tank lid off, blinked at the interior a couple of times, and said, "I've read about these.  Never actually seen one."

We put a baby gate across the doorway for dogproofing, and it's become an extremely convenient place to keep the kitchen wastebasket, the compost bucket, the gardening wellies, a bit of the recycling, etc.  But still -  it's a hatchet.