G230: Garden Tool Purge

I’m not sure what I imagined I had when I named this category back in January. I do know I got rid of a garden hose full of holes and tossed a broom that broke since then. But this is the sorry state of my garden tools. Not shown in the photo is one spade and one hand trowel. The hand trowel was given to me by a neighbor last year. I use it in the worm bin. The spade is something I brought on my move from Phoenix. But, when I moved I gave all my garden tools but this spade to a building inspector. Ha! Sounds like a bribe. As it turned out, this guy was a neighbor, a fellow progressive amongst the neighborhood association conservatives and a generally wonderful guy (and his wife was a wonderfully talented artist, educator). He’d help me by doing some repairs to make my home ready for selling. In return he got the electric weed whacker, pruning sheers, hand tools, rakes and hoses. I don’t regret it.

Where I live now I find I can borrow from neighbors or the park for the miniscule bit of tool related tasks. The sorry line-up in the photo is part of future art projects. At the far right you can barely see the broken, rusty pitch fork. Keeping it for no reason besides my being rust loving. The two beat up brooms will be transformed into over-sized artist brushes. The 2 larger rakes are actually antiques and will be used as supports in a future landscape/garden project. I have no idea how they were designed to be used, because they suck as leaf rakes. The small rake is so pathetic, but for raking up the light weight pine needles all over my place it works a treat. That last phrase is one I read from one of our favorite Aussie blogs. It cracked me up, so I’m happy I found a use for it (like the rake).

This continuation of the over-sized pencil theme is something my park manager suggested. Once the really big posts go to the new fence (scheduled for next weekend) I want to continue with the concept. She suggested the smaller tool handles as pencils or brushes. So, for now I am gathering them. So much for my purge . . .