Garden Tools

I've been waiting for spring for a very long time. We've had some nice weather, but then some snow; some plants are coming out, but the trees are still bare... A very long time.

So I was thrilled with a new Garden Tools catalog that came the other day. (The seed and bulb catalogs haven't found me yet, I suspect. Or maybe they all went out of business like all the airlines this week.)

Specialty catalogs are always amazing. It's worth the time to peruse them. It seems that there are some real 'specialty' items among garden tools in addition to the usual suspects - pruners, loppers, garden gloves, and how-to books. A "Sunlight Calculator" for example, "designed for use during the growing season" to measure the duration and intensity of sunlight falling at a given spot over a 12-hour period. So you can tell if you have the right growing conditions? (This is something I need. Even though I've lived here for 2 years, I really don't know how much sun my side yard gets.)

There is also a great selection of "Ergonomic Stainless-Steel Digging Tools" - shovels and spades, actually. They are photographed against a beautiful background and paired with both a chart (name, length, head size, weight) and a multiple-paragraph treatise extolling their virtues. Quite a spread! That all justifies the prices I suppose. No one would pay that much just for a short-handled shovel.

There is a Rock Rake, rolls of UV-Resistant Tape (for patching greenhouses and bundling products for outdoor storage, we are told,) a "Gripple Trellis and Fence System" that I really didn't understand. Or a transparent vinyl decal printed with a spider web to put on your windows so that birds - who "will naturally recognize this as a hazard" - don't fly into them. (I'll probably pass this up and just not wash the outside of my windows some more. "It's the ecological thing to do" is what I'll tell anyone who wonders.) There are Gutter Brushes, Power Rakes (not really distinguishable from regular rakes) and Indestructible Nozzles (ha!)

I better hide this catalog from Mark.