Home and Garden

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936), writer and poet

Gardeners are a necessary luxury if you work fulltime. No longer does the corporate world work on a set schedule, nor has it for sometime. This development has required me to employ the services of a gardener(s) to keep the yards presentable.

Having a gardener used to be a very meticulous and prideful occupation, but today with the advent of blowers, weed whackers and battery operated shears, when the gardeners come to the house it is more like watching a pit crew team during a NASCAR race. Mowers, blowers and trimmers racing around the house, only it’s helter skelter not a choreographed, organized event where the clean-up man follows the trimmer or the mowers, no it’s just cut, blow trim or trim, blow and cut. Rarely is it cut, trim and blow.



The advent of the blower seems to me the downfall of the art of gardening. Nothing is picked up – dust is just blown from one side of the yard to the other. Oh sure, a few leaves are picked up, but mostly the blowers are just small tornados sweeping the dirt under the carpet, and onto the carpet literally, if I don’t close the sliding door. Just rewards to the inventor of the blower will only be served, if he is sent to hell with the sound of blowers serenading him while he is forced to live and breathe in a cloud of dust.

Another part of the gardener equation is timing. They seem to show up whenever it is convenient to them; there is no set time. However, my gardeners are rather timely, since I threatened to replace the whole team with a group that would come a day earlier (Friday as opposed to Saturday). B2 was mentioning that his gardeners arrive just as the kids are going down for their nap or during naptime, worse still show up when they are entertaining family or friends. On The Mark’s band of mowers, blowers and trimmers will leave without a second thought if the gate is locked without checking to see if anyone is home.

Finally, during the holiday season, when service providers send their clients gifts for doing business with them throughout the year, my service providers expect a gift. I may be a misanthrope, but I am not a skinflint, so I give them something we could all use – cash. However, for the inventor of the blower, I have a suggestion for where he can place his blower.