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About Hardy Shrub Roses
About Heathers
About Flowering Crabs
wildlife habitat
Annuals Biennials Perennials
Culinary Herbs
The Healing Herbs
The Fragrant Herbs
Shakespearean and Bible Herbs
Do you Really Need A Tiller
Insect Attack
Flowers for Cutting
Pruning Pointers
Houseplants Clean the Air
Recipes Fresh from the Garden
The Gold Plated Gardener
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| The Gold Plated Gardener |
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I see by the papers that gardening is moving ahead of tennis, biking and cross-country skiing as America’s preferred leisure-time activity. And I can guess why: the aging baby boomers are beginning to feel that the aerobic game isn’t worth the candle any more. Once the bloom is off the rose, we’re taking time to mix our metaphors and smell them (the roses).We’re trading in our Rossignols for trowels and clogs. The decadent footnote to gardening’s new chic and trendy image is the solid gold gear we’re being peddled--at least by mail. Marketing gurus’ reasoning seems to be that what we once spent on lift tickets we are ripe to invest in gilded garden spades. (Or is it shovels? My husband and I have an ongoing argument over which is the pointy one). If I am to believe what I read in the mail-order catalogs, the well-appointed gardener of the nineties can’t step foot out the back door until she has attired herself with several thousand dollars worth of accouterments--from floppy hats and designer overalls to kidskin gloves and fancy footwear in primary colors. And for those who take their gardening seriously, there’s the trowel, the weeder, the cultivator, the tiller, the pruner, the raker, the sprayer, the duster, the imported watering can, the sod buster, the bug eater, the dust beater, the custom composter, the trugs, and the specialty worm. What’s wrong with this picture? I’m so glad you asked. Because where I come from, “to garden” is is a verb meaning, “to get down and dirty.” It’s dropping your butt in the mud. It’s wearing holes in the patches over the holes in the knees of your jeans. It’s black fingernails and bare feet, or at best, shoes you drop in the shed. For this leisure-time activity, no one expects you to look like a supermodel. Find your inner child soon, because if you can’t get dirty, you aren’t having fun. I concede that certain gardening tools are essential; not a battery, not a platoon, just a small but reliable squad. The must haves: a cultivator (what our family calls The Claw); an asparagus knife (best for popping out stubborn weeds like dandelions and plantains); a garden rake (the iron kind, not the bamboo leaf rake); a trowel; a rugged spading fork; a spade/shovel (the pointy one); probably a hoe; pruning shears if you grow ornamentals, and hedge trimmers if you have hedges. A tiller is useful for the serious, large-scale vegetable gardener. Don’t be seduced. Everything else is fluff. The thing about tools of any kind is to buy the best and take care of them. Nothing is more frustrating than a tool inadequate for the job it was designed to do. For years, we bought a new spading fork every season--after three months, the tines were hopelessly bent if not actually broken. At last we got smart and spent double the money for a lifetime fork. It’s been ten years (ok, not a lifetime yet) and the fork is as sturdy as the day it came off the assembly line. As soon as a new garden tool comes home, its handle is spray-painted a tasteless blaze orange. Green and brown handles are nature’s way of camouflaging innocent tools to blend in with their habitat. The sole purpose of a rake or a hoe is, the minute you let go of it, to fiendishly position itself where it can (a) trip you or (b) spring up and hit you in the schnozz. The unwary gardener is less likely to trip over a lurking hoe handle or return a Claw to the earth inside a bucket of weeds, if its handle is blazing that in-your-face neon orange. Bottom line: the savvy gardener saves on trendy clothes and spends the savings on solid tools. Or if that’s too much alliteration, try this: you can’t have a Martha Stewart garden and still expect to look like her at the end of the day. Bet she hires it out. |
| Palmyra | ME | 04965-4033 |
 shepherdsgdn@hotmail.com |
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| Visitors: 01733 |