A Good Set of Snips

Life is too short, and work too frustrating, using cheaply made tools. So today I have two recommendations for an everyday item for anybody with a garden.

One of my favorite local merchants is called Down the Garden Path, and they pop up at local garden shows. They carry lots of decor, but I go to them for hand tools, especially ones from Japan or with specialized, high-quality materials.

With an in-person purchase out of the question for Spring, I contacted them about ordering a larger set of Barebones snips that I'd gotten a few years back. I find them indispensable for harvesting greens, peas, and other produce. They snip twine I use for trellising peas and other spindly things.

I was greatly disappointed that Barebones is out of stock on that tool, but I got a different set and I'll compare how they work.

Barebones Small Shears

My small Barebones shears embody the company ethos: campers, DIYers, foragers, contrarians about consumer culture. People with tattoos who actually work in flannel shirts, not simply wear them at the brewpub or gallery opening.

These are my People: they'd rather split wood than push a button to have heat from a furnace. They'd tell stories instead of watching television. They'd drive a 1970...

Okay, I need to control myself. Maybe they do like TV, but they make some stunning axes, as well as gear for dining outdoors. We'd already gotten their hori-hori, based upon its heft and obvious quality.

I didn't know who they were when I bought the snips, but something about the design appealed to me. The metal looks sturdy, the wood grips on the handles remind me of quality grips on a old-time single-action cowboy revolver (another fetish of mine). The ergonomics are right; the big finger holes mean that you can get more than a single finger in when cutting, and that reduces strain on the hand when you are, say, going down 100 feet of row. There is no rattling about the pivot for the blades nor screw to work loose. The blades have a positive stop when fully open, so you don't overdo things.

Actually, scissors-geeks call that a pivot ride or balance face. Well, Barebones gots 'em!

It was only after using the tool that I found their site and realized I was in the company of other tractorpunks.

I shop my values, and I wanted snips that would outlive me. Barbones supplied them. We liked them so much we bought a second pair. At under $30, that's a good investment. They have never seen the sharpening stone.

Joshua Roth GardenCut #130

Back to my dread of trying another set of snips, after finding perfection, when the folks at Down the Garden Path suggested that I do so. They sent me these when the large Barebones were out of stock and they were gracious, as the Joshua Roths run 5-10 bucks more than the other shears. Again, that's yet another reason to buy locally. Amazon won't curate a purchase for you like that.

Happily, these "pruning shears," made in Taiwan, worked really well. They have the same dedication to quality I find in the Barebones tools. And unlike tools from the Mainland, ones from Taiwan have always impressed me, so I gave them a go.

Big plus that they are favored for Bonsai, a fiddly hobby I admire from a distance, having enough fiddling to do. Yet that speaks volumes about their sharpness and accuracy.

The reader will see that the blades are actually shorter than the Barebones, but the extra length of the handles and big finger holes mean they can do bigger jobs.

They also open WIDE, so I can snip something the size of a broccoli stalk. I've been using Felcos to cut rose canes, but I think these shears will soon perform that duty.  They do not have quite the tractorpunk gravitas of the Barebones, and, gasp, the finger holes are encased in plastic, I mean "polyflex soft vinyl," not Colt .45 walnut, partner. Despite that caveat, the vinyl has a pleasant give and I challenge you to get a blister using them. The metal is cutlery grade steel, so it should last a long time if treated well.

I'm happy to store both in the kitchen tool drawer. I cannot bring myself to toss them into the garden bucket, and in the kitchen I find many culinary uses for them.  Yes, I'll get more, starting with the larger Barebones. It's a sickness.

Now then, back to gardening!

Down the Garden Path, and Other Metaphors

I have a guilty secret: I am enjoying the lockdown. It coincides with the finest season for putting in a garden. With that in mind, I’m going to bring out metaphors for May that are garden-related.

This post will do double duty in my other blog, Richmond Writing, where I write about language and writing pedagogy.  

At Tractorpunk  I’ve also collected metaphors about time. Use this year’s extra time on your hands well; may I suggest planting a garden? I love growing and preserving (canning, dehydrating, freezing) as much of my own food as possible. I hope that’s a long-term impact of this pandemic. We need more home cooking with local food.

Many of these metaphors do indeed work in academic prose. Lots of them I learned from my mother, an avid gardener. She would sing “I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch” when weeding. I got my green thumb from her.

Bad seed: Nothing good comes of bad seeds in the greenhouse. They produce stunted plants or none at all. Metaphorically, a person is a bad seed if they come from a family with a history of trouble.

Down the garden path: I’ve not a clue why this metaphor is negative. It means to be led astray, to be deceived. To me, the garden path is one of the most pleasant places to wander. There’s no deception in a well-tended garden.

Early frost / blooming early / blighted: Though not all early bloomers come to grief, early frost is a sad situation, in the garden or in a person’s life. Things go awry early, and failure results. At least a watchful gardener can put buckets on top of small plants or drape row-cover over the lettuce (I had lettuce all winter this year). You cannot do that for a person who blooms early and then is blighted. Some of us are, however, late bloomers.

Make hay when the sun shines: I have a very small hay-making operation, so small that instead of purchasing a big baler, I hand-bale my cut hay on about an acre of tall grass. The yield is 3 or 4 small bales annually. It seasons for a year in my barn and then becomes weed-block or in our raised-beds or litter in our chicken coops.

No matter the method, haymaking depends on a stretch of sunny weather, preferably one with enough breeze to dry the cut stalks after they are raked (my favorite part of the operation is hand-raking with a beautiful handmade Italian hay rake). Wet weather ruins hay, making it rot on the ground.

So metaphorically, there’s a time for any activity: do it in its best season, neither hurrying it nor waiting too long: not quite the same as Carpe Diem, but certainly a metaphorical cousin. For problems, you want to nip them in the bud.

Peas in a pod: As in, “like two peas in a pod.” Okay, it’s a simile, not a metaphor, but it’s Mother’s Day and my mother was fond of this one. It can mean anything identical, but for mom it mean two people who did the same things, usually something stupid. Her wit was withering.

Reaping what you sow: I tend to over-seed my beds and then do a lot of thinning. We also are putting a six-acre field into wildlife management, which means suppressing invasive plants without chemicals but with a heavy application (think, tons) of buckwheat, clover, sunflower, bean and winter rye seed. That is most certainly not sown by hand but with a large device that looks like a rocket motor, inverted, behind my small tractor.

But if you put out no seeds, or the wrong ones, you get what you get, in the garden or outside it. When I learned to code, we said “garbage in, garbage out” about sloppy programming habits.  So much trouble results from poor planning and poor execution.

Snake in the grass: one of my least-favorite things. I keep the grass in and around the garden short, since last year I shot four Copperheads right in the garden or by the house. I will spare you the photo of a dead one shot in our chicken run, stretched out by my shotgun barrel–at 30″ they were the same length. In the woods, it’s another matter: snakes can go their own way. I don’t mind Black Racers or Rat Snakes at all, often moving them to spots where they can eat mice and keep the Copperheads at bay; I welcome black snakes into my barn and garage, though I keep an eye out! The metaphor of something dangerous in hiding conveys well with this metaphor. Watch your step around certain people!

Tender shoots: I hear this one each time a recovery comes after an economic downturn. But it’s true: the first shoots of new growth are really tender. They break or freeze easily.

Tough row to hoe: Bermuda or “wire” grass loves to sneak into our raised beds, and I don’t employ any herbicide or pesticides, preferring labor to cancer. So this metaphor comes into play a lot, when the weeds won’t come out of the ground and the bugs won’t go away; metaphorically, we all face similar tasks constantly. I think of this term as Southern, but it may well be universal.

Transplant: I grow a few hundred seedlings every year, moving from indoor grow-light station to greenhouse to raised beds. Whenever we move a plant from one growing medium to another, it’s transplanted. Think of how this metaphor works for humans. We are also uprooted. We put down new roots. We might decide to bloom where we are planted. Or we may wither in the wrong place or job. Mom was metaphorical here, too, about plants. When transplanting, she anthropomorphized her plants, saying “their feelings get hurt.” But in time, the plants would “get over it.”

Weeding and thinning: After venomous snakes, my least favorite thing. Yet you cannot grow plants as I do, without herbicides, without a lot of hand weeding. We weed in our lives all the time, from our personal libraries to our “friends” lists (I seldom do that, as I don’t accept friend offers unless I know someone in person). We also thin things, a more pleasant occupation since the over-sown seedling can go right to a flock of very eager chickens.

Windfall: Often paired with "profit," in economic journalism, but in an orchard wind often means an early crop of perhaps underripe fruit. My one experience with windfalls has been with tall persimmon trees. The fruit is best after frost, and it does not leave the tree easily. I have to shake the tree, pick low-hanging fruit, or wait for windfall before I bake my Thanksgiving persimmon pie.

We keep bees and chickens, and these provide fertile soil for other clusters of metaphors. Stay tuned! If I missed any of your favorite garden metaphors, send them my way. I’ll be harvesting them all summer!