Friday the 13th…

Happy Friday the 13th.

Is it just me or does a Friday the 13th in October seem more, shall we say, ominous than a Friday the 13th in any other month?

Back in the aughts I wrote some posts about superstitions and gardening on a Friday the 13th and have decided to repeat some of those superstitions again. The aughts were a while ago, and there may be new readers who never read those old posts or old readers with poor memories who may have forgotten them.

I’ll give you just three superstitions to ponder on as you are hopefully out and about in your garden on this fine Friday.

The first superstition is one of great controversy. When someone gives you a plant from their garden—a passalong plant—it will not grow if you thank the giver for it. Weird, isn’t it? Instead you should say something like, “I have the perfect spot for this plant,” or “that plant will look so good next to my <insert fancy botanical name of your choice>.”

The second superstition also sparked a bit of discussion when I first wrote about it. Did you know that seeds are guaranteed to grow when a pregnant woman sows them? I got that from my grandmother’s diary and some comments my aunt made about it. This doesn’t mean that seeds won’t grow if you aren’t pregnant when you sow them. But if you are having a difficult time getting some seeds to germinate, you might consider asking someone who is pregnant to sow them for you.

Upon hearing that, I actually made up a superstition that seeds grow better when oriented east and west instead of north and south. That superstition didn’t get much traction. After all, one could easily orient a bean seed east and west because it’s oval shaped, but there’s no way to orient a pea seed, which is round, in any particular direction.

The third superstition I found back in the day was related to garden hoes. Did you know if you carry a garden hoe (or spade or shovel) into the house, you must leave by the same door you came in or it could be curtains for you? I did additional research and found another superstition that if you carried a garden hoe into a house, you had to walk out backwards with it to avoid bad luck.

Mentioning this third superstition about garden hoes always brings up the question as to why would someone carry a garden hoe (or shovel or spade) into the house?

And what about garden rakes?

Goodness gracious. I wonder how some of these superstitions got started. Someone thanked someone for a plant and it never grew. Someone had a great year sowing seeds when they were pregnant and the neighbor next door who wasn’t pregnant couldn’t get seeds to germinate. Someone brought a garden hoe into the house and it caused all kinds of bad things to happen. (Notice the careful use of the adjective “garden” in that sentence to give it its proper meaning and you can stop that other kind of thinking right now. This is a clean, wholesome gardening blog!)

Anyway, I hope you have a good Friday the 13th. I’m not giving away any plants today and I’m leaving all the gardening tools outside. I don’t have plans to sow any seeds today. Besides the one pregnant mama in our family just had her baby a week ago so I guess seed sowing wouldn’t be a sure thing today.

But I just might make a bookmark with those four-leaf clovers my great-niece and great-nephew found for me earlier in the spring. Who knows what good fortune it could bring my way while using it to mark my place in a book?