Someday, a gardening TV show, like a home repair one, will
honestly depict how filthy, frustrating and icky it can be.
It is a disservice to new gardeners, especially, to
make it all look so easy and clean. Take someone whose green thumb is itching to plant for the first time. Visions of backyards brimming with picture perfect plants and profusions of colorful flowers, all bug-free and straight-rowed, dance in their heads.
No one speaks about cutting back years or at least a winter’s
growth of weeds to find an empty bird's nest or worse a full one - with baby mice or rats.
Breaking up untended ground, baked and frozen under sizzling summers and lingering winters can be back breaking work with a hoe in your hands.
Why do we never see a smiling host break a sweat, get a blister or wipe their forehead forgetting their gloves had alpaca poo on it?Breaking up untended ground, baked and frozen under sizzling summers and lingering winters can be back breaking work with a hoe in your hands.
All occur with regularity.
Then there is a wicked low-hanging branch that whips off the gardener's glasses. This leaves one fumbling around in the blind hope of finding their specs before a heart-stopping "crunch" is heard.
Then there is a wicked low-hanging branch that whips off the gardener's glasses. This leaves one fumbling around in the blind hope of finding their specs before a heart-stopping "crunch" is heard.
How about the hostile hose?
I have one.
Just when I think I know all its kinks, it suddenly stops spraying. As I turn to free it from its tangled self - with almost pre-planned viciousness - it unleashes a full torrent of water into my face.
I have one.
Just when I think I know all its kinks, it suddenly stops spraying. As I turn to free it from its tangled self - with almost pre-planned viciousness - it unleashes a full torrent of water into my face.
From late spring to early fall my garden shoes are flip flops.
Why is it that one will suddenly flies off as I am walking?
This causes my bare foot to hurtle, with unstoppable momentum, into the squishy mud where I just watered.
Why is it that one will suddenly flies off as I am walking?
This causes my bare foot to hurtle, with unstoppable momentum, into the squishy mud where I just watered.
When within days of harvesting the heads of cabbage, I have raised from seeds, are attacked by unseen critters that rip into its tender leaves with giant holes - I cry real tears.
I want to see that happen to someone in TV land.
They always look too neat, hair in place and wearing unsoiled gardening gloves. Reveling in the beauty of the greenery and plants surrounding them, at the end of the show they congratulate each other -sometimes holding cool drinks.
Show me their callouses, along with a pile of their dirt and sweat-stained clothes, and then they can have that drink!
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