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Dane Allred’s Rules of Engagement
SPADING MYSELF Part one
This is not what you may be thinking after hearing this subheading. It has nothing to do with spaying, but with the common potato pitchfork, which is sometimes called a garden spade. It's like a regular pitchfork you may think of from the farm, but these pitchforks are used to harvest potatoes without too much damage, and they are excellent for loosening up compacted ground. The tines are about as big around as a finger.
I had used this particular tool for several years, and in fact had worn out several handles of past potato pitchforks. They are just too handy for loosening the ground around stubborn weeds. It works like this.
The spading pitchfork is just light enough that I can lift it up to my shoulders while sitting on the ground and thrust it into the ground in front of me with enough force to get the tines into the ground several inches. Usually I stab the ground where the weeds need pulling, and after moving the handle a bit, the ground is loose; the roots are loose, and with a simple pulling motion, a section of weeds is no more.
I have developed special muscles across my back and in my arms after stabbing this tool into the ground thousands of times every summer. I even stabbed myself in the palm once, and I think it needed three stitches. This first injury happened when a grape vine had deflected my aim for the ground, and the tines of the fork were sharp enough after the thousands of times it had penetrated dirt that it really was as sharp as a knife. The metal on the tines glows a bright silvery color from the constant sanding by the soil. But even this slight wound in my hand didn't stop me from continuing to use the potato pitchfork as my designated tool of weed elimination.
My daughter was getting married in the late summer and wanted to use our backyard for the reception. I had been slaving away trying to make the place look its best, and that included weeding where I hadn't for a few years. It was the opening night of the play "Cinderella" at the Sundance Outdoor Theatre. I was being paid to play the father of the prince, and had the unique opportunity to appear onstage in a dinner jacket, a cravat, white boxer shorts, tall black socks and slippers, reading a newspaper and ignoring my son.
That's right. I was to appear onstage with no pants. The fly of the boxer shorts had been sewn shut, and I was wearing something else under them just in case, but I guess it's time to admit that if money is involved and it's not immoral, I will probably do it. This would also explain when I picked my nose in another commercial for $300.00.
But I digress. We had been let out of rehearsal early and I knew that once the play started I would be very tired in the daytime and would probably not get much weeding done. So I determined to get some of the worst weeding over before the show that night and that included a patch where some planting pots had been sitting for a few years with seedlings in them. This had allowed the dandelions and other long-rooted weeds to really gain a foothold.
I really like working in the yard. I sell plants from my yard on EBay, and shipped over 600 packages of various plant material in the last 6 months. Mostly these are plants that are growing in the wrong place and I would be weeding them anyway, so when I pull them up I place them in a plastic bag with some loose dirt and add a little water. I seal them up and mail them on their merry way.
The best example of this is what some people call horse mint, which is really catnip. It grows in various places all over the yard, and when I see some and have sold some, I yank it up and instead of throwing it away, I turn it into cash. Even the groundcover that I sell is usually the stuff that is growing outside of the prescribed area where I want it to grow. Then it is a weed, and would probably be thrown away or burned anyway. Instead, it becomes money. It's a fun way to do the weeding in the yard.
Which brings me back to the stabbing. I have half an acre of land, and it takes most of my student-free summers to keep it under control. I can spend up to three or four hours a day in the yard and still not get done all I want to.
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