YESTERDAY, IT WAS MY READING GLASSES; the week before, a favorite trowel. What is it with the garden that it has to be so hungry, so greedy–swallowing up all my belongings one at a time? Lost anything in your garden lately? (Thanks, Andre Jordan, for this vintage doodle.)
doodle by andre: lost anything in the yard lately?
June 27, 2012 at 6:38 am
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Talk about losing garden items—over a lifetime of gardening, I have lost–and found–a boatload of clippers, scissors, spaders, big and small shovels, etc.. My recent habit of keeping ALL 4 essential tools ON my kneeler pad has helped; also, my daughter has taped all my tools with bright red tape. I hope to continue gardening until at least age 92. Currently, 80, so want my favorite tools handy. Thank you all, so much, for the funny “lost items” stories.
Hope you find your trowel. I read in a gardening book, that you should paint the handles of all your tools a bright pink or other glaringly bright color so that you can find it easily. Great advice, but one I have yet to follow!
I lost a beautiful (small) dangly earring while doing spring cleanup. i am hoping it will turn up in the fall.
Reading glasses are always disappearing and being replaced. Added a lost pair to the collection when my husband turned over the compost pile and there they were. Also, found my favorite Felco pruners in same pile. Now that is the first place I look for lost items.
My constant and continuing loss are my gardening gloves. I go out to my garden with the best of intentions, all properly gloved, and then I find that the gloves prevent me from pulling up some small weed or doing another chore requiring manual dexterity and off come my gloves, never to be seen again.
Hope you find that dangly earring, Jean. Nice to see you!
My hori-hori (Japanese farmer’s weeding tool) knife is a frequent disappearing act- am now on my fourth….having lost (and much later found) several over the years.
It has become the indispensible tool so when one goes missing, after a few days I replace it……. but this record is over 20 years or so and one of my lost and founds now lives in Portland Oregon where it is also loved and used regularly. Currently looking for one lost earlier this spring!
I’m so glad to hear it’s not just me! My husband always looks at me like “really??” when I turn up without the clippers I went out with — again. So far this year I think I’m down three tools so far… Ack!
Down three so far, Ann? Yes, probably about that here, too. I did find my glasses, though! May stumble on the rest before long..
Hi, Patricia. I love the hori-hori. Great tool for in the cracks and crevices of the patio, too.
somehow my grandfather’s hammer disappeared into the garden. We had a friend’s daughter come by with her metal detector and do a full sweep of the yard to no avail. The handle of the hammer was almost exactly the same color as the wood chips carpeting large swaths of the yard and to this day the hammer has not resurfaced…we still live in hope.
Did you hear about the woman who lost her engagement ring and years later it turned up attached to a carrot?
Hi, Kathy. That’s hilarious. Was it proposing to her? :)
Hi, Jamie and Shawn. I have lost hammers outside but so far have always found them. Fingers crossed for your grandfather’s!
My patience!!! My patience when I have to stop gardening and go in because:
– sun went down
- have to make dinner
- someone thinks it’s more important to have clean clothes then a weed free patch
- etc.. etc.. etc..
In two years I will retire and garden until I want to quit.
Lost my glasses, searched everywhere. Found them three years later in the raspberry patch.
Oooh, Kathy – you just made retirement look that much better! I lol’d at your comment! Sounds like my life around here! Clean? Cook? WHAT?
Hi, Susan. Was the prescription still good? :)
This conversation has been wonderfully entertaining. Thanks for bringing it up Margaret. I guess we can all relate to it in one way or another but I’ve been thinking………..maybe it isn’t us after all. Maybe it’s the garden fairies! Just sayin…
Yes, two stories….(well, three)
One year I planted a new “Sunsprite” rose at my S. California home. I could not find my glasses! Unfortunately, the next year the rose died. I dug it out of the ground, and lo and behold, there were my glasses attached to the root!
I had a pair of Fiskar flower clippers. Lost them at my N. California home (we had moved), and the next spring I found them under water in a plastic bin I had left on my potting bench over the winter. They were miraculously in good shape!
My husband, however, never did find his wedding ring he lost in our Owosso, Michigan garden!
Hi, Rhonda. You are quite the clever misplacer of things in the garden — excellent jobs on all counts in hiding them from yourself! Love these stories (except your husband’s rin, so sorry). See you soon.