Monday, September 3, 2012

Trying For A Green Thumb

I spent part of my Labor Day pruning a pink dogwood tree in my front yard. I planted this tree about 10 years ago, and still haven’t seen even one of the fabulous pink flowers it’s supposed to have. Its leaves were starting to look spotted and dried out, so I took a cutting to the nearest nursery. The experts told me my tree probably had a fungus. To help the tree’s recovery, I was told to prune it and clean any leaves beneath it. I was also told to clean my tools afterwards, in order not to spread the fungus to another plant. Great... this was NOT going to be fun. I got all my tools out, including the giant clippers-on-a-really-really-long-pole. This pole came to my attention when I was in line at Home Depot several years ago. Someone was buying one, and I was fascinated. I decided right then I needed to own one. The first time I used the pole, I was pruning a 30’ cedar tree. I hadn’t realized when I bought the pole, that it had clippers at the end. I had just thought it was an extremely long hook. I climbed my crappy 5’ aluminum ladder, and used the big hook to pull branches within reach. Then I tied the long rope from the pole to my ladder, whereupon I would use my clippers to trim the branches. Looking back on it now, this procedure was awkward and silly. At the time, though, I thought I was a genius gardener. At one point, as I was standing on the top of the ladder, I lost my balance. I grabbed the pole and rope, and guess what happened? The hook actually cut the branch it was hanging on. Who knew? (besides everyone else in the gardening world) I felt like the biggest damn doofus, and hoped nobody had been watching my gardening acrobatics. Today, I used the clipper pole properly. I did giggle to myself the entire time, though. Good thing nobody knows about my mistaken use of the big giant clipper pole... until now.

No comments:

Post a Comment