Lost in the Garden

I recently finished a long session of weeding by losing my gardening knife.

Some gardeners call these useful knives hori-hori knives, and they are quite useful for weeding, planting, and even cutting an edge on a flower border, if one decides to do that by hand. They are also easily lost, I’ve found, ironically, as this is not the first time I’ve lost mine in the garden.

I lost this particular gardening knife several years ago and only found it after I bought a second knife. That knife will soon become my main gardening knife if I don’t find the previous main (and favorite) gardening knife soon. Yes, both have brown wood handles. I may buy one of the gardening knives with an orange plastic handle as my new back up knife, or paint the handle on my second knife so it is easier to spot in the garden.

Onward now for a list of what else I’ve lost in my garden, in no particular order.

Gardening Gloves

I once found a pair of gardening gloves in the bottom of the compost pile. They surely had been there for years, based on how deep down in the pile they were and how often I dig out and use my compost, which is not that often. The gloves had not composted and after a good washing were nearly as good as new.

I still wear them occasionally, when I can’t find a decent pair of my other, favorite gardening gloves.

Pruners

Ah yes, pruners. I haven’t had the heart to confess that my good pruners with the red handles, plus the clip-on holster that I wear to keep the pruners at the ready when I am out in the garden, are somewhere out in my garden, or possibly in my truck, or garage, or house.

(Yes, I did just pause and go out to the truck to look more thoroughly. I didn’t find the pruners, but I found a phone charger that works with a first generation iPhone and a large umbrella that I thought was in my other vehicle. When I couldn’t find it there a few weeks ago, I thought it was lost too. But now it’s found. But no pruners!)

They could be in the garage somewhere. Or the house. I remember… well, no matter, they are currently lost.

Other Gardening Tools

Other than the gardening knife, I have at various times lost trowels, hand hoes, and other assorted hand tools used for gardening. Fortunately, after a bit of searching, I’ve found most of them. Though there was that time I found my Cobrahead® weeder after the snow had melted as I was going around inspecting various trees and shrubs to see how they were doing.

It was lying in the grass right where I had last used it in the fall. The good news is the Cobrahead® weeder was fine. No rust. No decay. Indesctructible and still well-used.

Plant Tags

Who hasn’t looked for a plant tag and found it was missing (more irony there). It happens. Someone asks me the name of a particular plant or I’m just personally suddenly quite curious about the name of a plant and can’t remember it. I spin through the Rolodex of plant names in my mind and still can’t find it. (You young kids will just have to look up Rolodex if you don’t know what that is.)

Anyway, after trying to remember, I look around the base of the plant thinking I might have stuck its plant tag in the ground nearby. When I can’t find the tag there, I begin searching through odd piles of tags in the garage and then on to the basket in the sunroom where any tag not otherwise discarded ends up. Then years later I sort through that basket of tags and make YouTube videos of me doing so.

Oh, wait, that plant tag could be on top of the dryer where plant tags that have gone through the washer end up. (Why do I wash my plant tags in the washer? I don’t, generally. I wash the pants I was wearing in the garden and there just happen to be a few plant tags still in the pocket…)

Plants

Ha ha, you say you’ve never lost a plant in your garden? I don’t think that’s true. All gardeners lose plants in their gardens in two ways. One by merely forgetting where they planted them. And two when plants up and die on them. The worst is when a gardener forgets where they planted a lovely plant or two, and then those plants up and die on them because they forgot the plants were there and didn’t water them enough. Tsk, tsk.

Which leads me to explain why I chose a picture of Baptisia for the beginning of this post. Because I once had a yellow flowering Baptisia ‘Carolina Moonlight’. I can’t find it where I know I planted it years ago, which makes me wonder if I moved it when I planted another bunch of Baptisia in another spot. But I can’t imagine I moved it there because they have deep roots… anyway, I’ve lost Baptisia ‘Carolina Moonlight’. I’m hoping by writing about it here, I’ll find it.

Which reminds me, I am also missing Lychnis flos-cuculi ‘Petite Jenny’ which has pink blooms in May. This one is Lychnis ‘Petite Henri’ which has white flowers.

Though ‘Petite Henri’ is lovely, I was looking in the garden for ‘Petite Jenny’ to come up so I could move her to the new bed of pink flowers. And I could not find her. She, too, is lost in the garden. Sadly, not lost in that I don’t know where she grows, or should grow, but lost in that she grows no more.

Moving on…

Time

How does one lose time in a garden? How does one lose time in general? You start doing something and before you know it, 30 minutes have flown by and you are convinced it was only 10 minutes. Fortunately, there are far worse ways to lose time than in a garden. (I’m looking at you, Social Media, you thief of time with no conscience!)

Unfortunately, time lost cannot be found, so just accept that every time you step into a garden, you might lose time, or lose track of time. But on the flip side, think about how much you’ll gain.

Yourself

Finally, you can lose yourself in a garden. Which means you may find yourself in a garden. And I hope you do. Go do so now while I head off to lose myself at the local greenhouse, where maybe I’ll find some plants I forgot I needed. Or maybe I’ll find some gardening knives for sale, the ones with the orange handles.