Are any of you fellow gardeners like me at this time of year, waking up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning with your brain synapses “twitter-tweeting” to each other about some ideas for new gardening or yard projects?
This happens frequently with me – and after I get up and review my early morning brain activities – many of them are discarded as being impractical, but some are actually followed through. Some also are ideas about what to put in this blog, some are prompted by articles written by others of you as gardening blog contributors.
For instance, I was thinking about Carol Lee’s comments regarding the “stylishness”, or lack thereof, of what we might choose for our gardening attire. One thought I had was perhaps we don’t “choose” it from day to day. It might be just what’s available to us on a given day, i.e. maybe IT chooses US? Or, after some days of use, we may decide that donning a CLEAN pair of jeans or shirt is in order, thereby delaying for a few more days the neighbors turning us in for vagrancy. How does that old saying go? “If you play in the dirt, you get dirty”. Hmmmm… we gardeners cannot be – in general – a vain lot, can we?
Curious headgear is one of my specialties, or perhaps peculiarities. I wear headgear with large brims to keep the sun off of my face, neck and ears. Over the years I have worn straw “farmer” hats, “planter” hats, cowboy hats, an Aussie Digger hat (lopsided shade!), and a hard white plastic pith helmet. The latter was worn for several seasons and always got a laugh from the neighbors and a comment or two about “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”, but I finally quit wearing it because got so stained it made me look like a bird jungle survivor, and besides, it made too much noise in the dryer after washing (just kidding!).
Good Ol' Stinky
Our “non-vanity” might also extend to the vehicle(s) that we drive, especially if it’s one we use for hauling plants, mulch, fertilizer, lumber and such. I’m not a fan of SUV’s or “Testosterone Trucks”, if you catch my drift, but I do have an old Ford station wagon I fondly call “Stinky”, for reasons I won’t go into here lest I run afoul of the EPA (No, it doesn’t have blue smoke coming out of the tailpipe!). “Stinky” has served me well over the years. I have used it for everything from hauling loose dirt, sand and bricks – to the usual plants and other tools-of-the-trade, even some 4”x6”x12’ treated timbers (you know how heavy those things are) – and it doesn’t complain. But now the driver’s door is sincerely threatening to fall off, so I guess it’s time I give it some attention. It still runs well, so I plan to keep it for several more years. I can always rope the door shut, right?
I’m sure the neighbors are also curious (perhaps that’s not the right word) about my plants, pots, trash cans, timbers, piles of gravel and dirt, etc. that suddenly appear at the side of my driveway nearly every spring, and seem to take quite a while to disappear. Every spring seems to require changing my landscaping in some way, hopefully for the better. At least in my opinion it’s better, and that’s what counts, right?
Here’s to our Gardening Eccentricities!
Cheers,
Gardener Dave