I was just outside raking a friend’s garden and no, that’s no a euphemism for anything. I’m at a friend’s house, I went outside got her rake and started raking her garden. Not really sure why I did it; certainly it’s not because I’m a nice guy. I guess it’s because I knew it needed to get done, it would help her when it comes to planting new stuff for the spring and living in the city doesn’t give me much of a chance to play in the yard. (They look funny at you when you try to redecorate Central Park.)
The garden had a thick layer of last year’s leaves covering it and it didn’t take long before I had a pretty sizable and rather immovable pile of leaves. Still several feet from the edge of the garden I pondered my options and decided to look in her garage for a tarp. I could load them on the tarp and drag them to the edge of the property where there is a thicket of trees all these leaves would look perfectly natural underneath.
I opened the garage door and saw an even better solution to my problem: a leaf blower. I knew she had one, but since I’ve never had one before my natural response to “we must move leaves” is “pick up a rake. Now looking at the orange and black of these tool made me think “And here I was raking leaves like a chump.”
I brought it out to where my pile was and, after several failed attempts finally figured out how to get it started. That was when I realized that leaf blower is not as simple as, say, quantum physics. The wet pile of leaves was almost as stubborn to the forces of air as it had been to the forces of muscle (such that I have) and, when it finally started to respond, took off in every direction at once. Every direction that is except the one I wanted it to go in.
Pretty soon I mastered enough of the basics to be somewhat productive, and so, one pile moved, I decided to start on the rest of the garden. This proved to be a different sort of challenge, as I had to contend with large shrubs, the walls of the house and an always curious dog. My ultimate downfall, however, were the early blooming flowers.
For some reason I thought they’d be more resilient to the blower, seeing as how they were rooted and all. Nope. The first flower I sent tumbling across the yard made me realize I had to strike a balance between muscle power and machine power. I turned off the blower, picked up the rake and tried my best to at least move the leaves so that the flowers were out of harm’s way.
In the end I think I did a decent job. I’d give myself a solid B. Points in my favor was the recognition that sometimes there is no one best way, but rather two (or more) ways that need to come together and work in harmony to achieve the desired results. I take points off because there are still pockets of leaves stuck between bushes that the rake is too big for and there is nowhere for me to blow the leaves to if I got under there with the machine. I could always cry “But I deserve an A, because I did the best with the tools I have!” However a good operator not only doesn’t blame his tools, he makes sure he has the right ones to do the job with.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll convince her to stop by Lowe’s and pick up the right sized rake. (That’s what people do in the ‘burbs on weekends, right? Go to Lowe’s?) Once again, not sure why I’d want to do this. I think at this point it boils down to me wanting to finish the job I started. And maybe it’s because as a 44 year old bachelor I’m not sure what the big romantic things are I should be doing, so I’ll stick to the little things that I can handle.
Like raking her garden
Today’s bonus track: Only the best song ever about gardens. Click here to listen. And believe me, it was tempting to link up a 40 minute four song live jam, but I know most of you don’t have that kind of time.
PopcornJackTerry 