Much of the garden writing I do includes a whine or two about how little sun I have in my yard because of all the huge trees.

As our town’s favorite son was often heard to sing, a little less conversation, a little more action, please.

(Now that’s a chain saw).

I’m having a few trees removed.

I’ll still have enough trees to qualify as an arboretum, but my backyard will have room for more fruit trees, blueberry bushes, and hopefully a couple of nice, long rows of muscadines.

Plus, the fruit trees, shrubs, and garden veg I already have growing will have more than the six or so hours of sun they’ve been barely getting by on.

I’ll still have a good three sides of my perimeter full of trees but in the backyard I’ll have . . .

. . . A little more bite and a little less bark.

I fought the shade year after year and no matter what I tried, the shade won. You can’t fight shade. Shade always wins.

When the trees are cleared, the trunks hopefully turned into useable lumber, the branches into firewood, the twigs and leaves into mulch, a new chapter in gardening will begin. I don’t know for certain I’m up to the challenge, but I want to try.

I do know this: all that shade-ification wasn’t satisfactioning me.