Show Us Your Tool!

Today is the first official gardening day here at our house. We've been out of town for the first few days of acceptable gardening weather. So far this spring, we've just spent our weekends looking out our windows at the falling rain. But we've managed to squeeze in an hour or two of gardening here and there. Of course, now it is raining. Again.

I had a particularly stubborn plant that I wanted eradicated. I shoveled, I pulled, I cried. I admitted defeat. My ever so helpful husband put on his boots and proceeded to the garage to get his favorite gardening tool -- the tamp bar. No, this is not a tool for orchid growing or transplanting seedlings, but it is the ideal tool for the kind of gardening my husband does. His specialty is eradication. I prefer little use of chemicals (he, more), but we both have a thing for brutal and permanent removal of the unwanted.

The tamp bar is thought to be at its most useful in digging post holes or for leverage in lifting rocks. We think its list of uses is never ending. I recall one day, a neighbor got her car stuck by driving over a railroad tie. A young man came to her assistance, but could do nothing. I came out to look and mentioned that I had a heck of a tool in my garage. The young man came to look and said he had never seen such a thing. Minutes later, the car was lifted free and the young man proclaimed his devotion to the tamp bar.

Here's our version of American Gothic. Sorry that I couldn't join in with my muddy knees and dirt smeared face.

Second laters, it rained. Again.


What's (or who) is your favorite gardening tool?