What Shape Are Your Gloves In?

Photo by Jean Scheijen

It is that time of year again; time to get the band-aids out of the cabinet and onto my hands and fingers. While I am building up the calluses on my hands for the season ahead, I have already had a couple of blisters form and pop. Sitting in front of a computer and driving as much as I have done in the last six months, has allowed my hands to go soft and lose the calluses from last year.

Spring time has brought about the time to start working out in the yard more and more.  With the additional daylight we are starting to get each day, it is easy to find myself out longer and longer on the days that I am home.  There is always something that needs to be raked, shoveled or moved. My hands are now starting to show the effects of the extra time spent in the yard.

I have been raking the dead leaves from last year away from the rose bushes and some of the perennials throughout the yard. Some of these leave were purposely and strategically placed last fall as an insulating protection. However, there were plenty of stray leaves that, over the course of the winter, blew in and decided to add their protecting values to places I didn’t know needed protection. But what do I do with all of the extra leaves?

There has been talk about a community composting project. I didn’t want to wait that long to see what was going to happen there, and I don’t like sending clean yard waste to the landfill, and by clean, I mean without chemicals. And I couldn’t burn the leaves, so I spread them out on my lawn, got the lawn mower out of the garage, and mowed  over them. I’ll start my own compost pile.

Actually, I’ll discuss composting later, but for now, the chopped up leaves are going in the garden. We are putting in raised beds for part of our garden this year, and so the leaves will aid in mixing with the soil, creating a lighter, fluffier planting bed.  However, this would be a great additive to help in the aeration of a regular garden and/or flower bed too.

Since the chopped up leaves are brown, a high carbon ratio, and I won’t be adding any green material to the soil yet, I will have to offset the high carbon ratio with some added nitrogen. This will help in the balancing the carbon to nitrogen ratio that is so important in composting. This source of nitrogen can come from regular fertilizer but be careful how high the first number is on the fertilizer bag.  I like to use some of the organic nitrogen fertilizers, such as blood meal, because they are slower to break down and will not burn or hurt new vegetable starts.

As I am raking, shoveling and mixing the chopped leaves with the dirt that I brought in from the neighbors, the blisters have started to form once again on my hands. But that is my fault because I was willing to work with the broken tool that needed to be fixed or replaced.  Yes I consider gloves to be tools.  They are important and need to be taken care of also.

There are many things that need to be done to get ready for spring and working in the yard. Make sure your shovels, hoes, and pruners have been sharpened and are in good working condition.  These maintenance tasks or repairs will allow for easier work and for your safety in the yard.  Duct tape isn’t the answer to fixing a cracked handle.  Though I have seen it done, I can say that I haven’t used it myself to splice a handle of a shovel or hoe. When using the proper tool in good working condition, that task at hand won’t seem like drudgery: You will enjoy working in the yard even more.

Even though I have several pairs of gloves to choose from, I have one pair in particular that have been worn through a couple of seasons, they are very comfortable, and has seen a lot of use, they have served me well, yet I can’t seem to part with them.  Hence the real reason to get the band-aids out: my gloves, that I have relied on for so long,  just need to be replaced, band-aids won’t hold them together any longer.