New Boots

Today's garden mission is to finish cleaning out all the pockets of last year's leaves and to finish the project I started yesterday of collecting and disposing of all the old old bits of garden hose and soaker hose still lingering about in the garden.


But first I want to tell you about my new garden boots. I have been on the lookout for some sort of boot to slip over regular shoes to wear in the garden. The other day I found these things called sloggers at the local garden shop. They are some sort of very heavy duty rubber like plastic with Velcro straps at the side. They look like they will hold up against a lot of abuse. They came in two colors, yellow and black but yellow was the only color they had in my size. My only hesitation in the purchase was the color. I do not wish to be mistaken for a relative of Big Bird. I got over that and now I am glad I got the yellow. I think they set off my bright red suspenders quite nicely.






Now about those hoses. There was a time when I was really big into soaker hoses and drip irrigation. I had hoses and tubes running everywhere around here. It was all quite elaborate and all automatic. I set it up in the spring and that was my last concern about watering, except for paying the monthly water bills, which were yes, substantial. Then about 5 years ago when I became more cost conscious I started cutting back on the hoses and watering less. All went well for a couple of years then we had a really hot year with little rain. This happened to coincide with a particular family crisis which took my mind away from the garden. The result was a fairly severe loss of garden plants, in particular the less drought tolerant varieties. The next summer I decided to just go with the survivors. If you can't take a little dry spell every so often, then I figured you didn't belong in my garden. So for the past two springs I have been picking up all those hoses to either salvage or dispose of and this year I am determined to get the last of them.

Not much can be salvaged though unfortunately. Some of the fittings can be saved. The custom designed copper fittings that I made can be recycled of course. The thermostat wire for the controls I will save but the actual hoses are not worth much. Old and brittle, clogged with lime, they will be cut up into foot log pieces and sent to the curb for trash pick up.