WHAT’S SO FUNNY: If plants could scream

During rough economic times you take on responsibilities you might have previously paid others to handle. A man used to bring a small crew on Wednesdays to trim and mow our yard, and we recently decided we couldn’t afford him for a while.

Although it was a necessary budgetary move, I regretted dispensing with Mr. Lopez’s services, both because I like him and because I knew I was now, at least partly, Mr. Lopez. My history with the plant world is not a happy one. Plants don’t thrive under my — well, “care” is a strong word. They don’t thrive under my eye.

The lawn isn’t the problem, really. I can handle a lawn as long as I don’t have to make it grow. Laguna lawns aren’t large anyway, especially not by Missouri standards. I grew up hauling a mower up and down a riverside bluff when I weighed only slightly more than the mower did.

A few weeks after the departure of Mr. Lopez I bought a weed whacker and attacked the overgrown back yard with long, sweeping scythe-like strokes. Van Gogh could have painted me, a hardy peasant in his field, with his extension cord. When I had finished, the lawn had random-pattern baldness and the remaining grass was completely intimidated.

It’s not that I try to be lethal; I just am. I can kill plants with either attention or neglect. I can kill them in a pot or a garden plot. I can kill a rose with a hose. I’m Jack the Ripper with a clipper.

If plants could scream, you’d have heard ours the day I took over. If our Birds of Paradise could fly, you’d have seen them soaring over Alta Laguna Boulevard, looking for a new yard.

And I like our Birds of Paradise. These are flowers my rudimentary sensibility can appreciate. They have bright primary colors. The name makes sense. They look like birds — I get it. They’re also sturdy, which plants have to be if they’re going to survive around me.

But I must improve. I can’t go on in my old ways or our house will be surrounded by a withered ring of death. Patti Jo has given me some pointers. Her advice on roses involves cutting them at a strategic point and requires judgment with which I may not be equipped, but she says when a Bird of Paradise bloom turns brown I should just clip it as far down as I can reach. I can do that. We’ll see how it goes.

My grandmother used to say that during the Depression families were closer, because they had to live together to get by. Now that these birds and I have been thrown together by circumstance, we’re taking a much greater interest in each other.

SHERWOOD KIRALY is a Laguna Beach resident. He has written four novels, three of which were critically acclaimed. His novel, “Diminished Capacity,” is now available in bookstores, and the film version is available on DVD.