Brazen Chickadee Sucker Punch

I am crouched in the middle of an overgrown lilac bush, rusty secateurs in hand, and I am conversing with a brazen chickadee. The small, round bird is perched on a crooked branch only a couple of short feet away. It’s looking me straight in the eye as we shoot the shit. The sun is out and doing its best to cut through the interspersed shadows that envelop us both. This chickadee and me are through with the introductions and small talk and heading into a truly friendly tête-à-tête.

While we’re talking, I absentmindedly reach out and grab out for a sucker to prune back, but instead, I am punched back in numbness. The stabbing pain bolts me back into reality and I am suddenly aware that I haven't really been talking to a chickadee at all, but rather echoing the tiny bird’s chirps. I have been engaging in actual birdspeak for approximately fifteen more minutes than any human respectably should. I look down and see what look like half a dozen tiny cat claws lodged in my fingers and the palm of my left hand. A wave of nausea strikes through my body as I gingerly extract each thorn from its tenuous grip. 

I stop speaking to the bird and look away. It gives up on me and flies away.

I focus back on my pruning. I start by just cutting off tiny dead branches, but really I have no idea what I'm doing. I progressively move to larger branches but end up cutting of some new buds along with the old, dried-out pods. I wonder, do you cut off some healthy to destroy the truly dead? Am I cutting off too much all at once? Will I send the plant into some sort of shock? Some version of foliage arrest?

I keep at it for some time. My hands begin to blister. The secateurs are rusty and hard to use because I haven't taken care of them. I haven't taken the time to put them back in their proper place after each use. Instead, they've sat out in rainstorms, gotten lost in the grass, turned from sharp and helpful to rusty and difficult. I feel bad, so instead of replacing them with new ones, I suffer through the harder grip needed to make them work. To do the work I'm not quite sure how to do.

I step back from the giant shrub to survey my efforts. There is a giant bald patch on one side of the plant where I have been pruning. My mind wandered and I wasn't careful. I tried what I thought might work, but I kept cutting and hacking and weeding and suddenly there is nothing left. My hands are throbbing from overexertion and my work is not good. I should have figured things out before I started.

I throw the rusty shears to the ground and go inside.