What happens to those gloves, pruners, trowels, loppers, dandelion diggers and other assorted gardening tools that disappear in the garden?
One minute you are using a tool and then you set it down, perhaps to pick up another garden tool and then when you reach to grab it again, and it’s gone.
Gone.
You hunt for it, feel for it, and look high and low for it. It is nowhere to be seen. But it was just there! You just used it. How could it be gone?
But it is gone, and as daylight turns to dusk, you finally give up the search, shrug your shoulders and head in for the evening, still wondering where your garden tool is, how you could have lost it right beside you, and if you will ever find it again.
Based on all the comments from those who entered the drawing to win a hoe●dag®, this phenomenon of missing tools is a common problem that gardeners have.
There can only be one explanation as to what happens to these gardening tools.
Garden fairies.
Yes, garden fairies.
The minute we turn our backs on our favorite gardening tools, the garden fairies sneak in and snatch them away. They carry them off to the outer reaches of the garden in places we barely know exist – under shrubs and hedges, in that bit of brush near the fence line, perhaps even at the bottom of a compost bin. And the more we love that tool, the higher the bounty for it, and the more likely a garden fairy is waiting for us to set it down so that as quick as a puff of pollen, they can grab it and run.
Then the garden fairies peer out from their favorite hiding places and watch as we wander the garden, looking high and low for that favorite tool. They know we won’t find it!
Sometimes, if we are lucky, the garden fairies will relent a little and return the tool to a spot where it will be in plain view. Then they howl with laughter and glee as we stumble across it and wonder how we missed seeing it, in plain sight, for so long.
That’s what happens to our missing garden tools…
(The tool above, one of my favorites, was hidden in garden by the garden fairies last fall. Then earlier this spring, when the garden designer came to see my garden for the first time, those garden fairies put it in plain sight in one of my flower beds. I’m sure they thought it was hilarious. That’s not what I thought!)
That's funny, Carol. I think the garden fairies like socks, too. The minute I throw the odd one out, it's mate appears. And appears to be laughing.
I have many garden fairies here too, they also seem to take plant labels from the pot in which I keep them, but only the 1 label that they know I am going to be searching for – not all of the rest!
Su
Hello,
In Greece, we have also the same problem, I always try to found my tools but…
So it must be the garden fairies.
Is there no end to what the fairies will take?! Tomato rings, garden twine and books too. Sometimes they return them but mostly not. I'm tempted to build a shrine and offer gifts in hopes of appeasing them.
I found kitchen shears out on the back hillside under a thicket of weeds. Rusted, laying there for quite some time it was clear. Do garden fairies come into the house and take things too? This alarms me.
The garden fairies are pretty active here. Right now they are off playing with one of my new garden gloves that I took off for a single moment that required bare fingers. They will probably place it where they place all the tools they appropriate – in front of my husband's mower. He does the mowing – I can't hog all the pleasures of gardening.
Garden fairies, eh? Thank goodness, I thought it was me who had misplaced my tiger-tooth knife. I suppose it will turn up when I buy a new one.
Garden faires is an excellent therory unless of course you have garden gnomes.
Garden faires must like to play ball because I'm constantly finding small balls and occasionally an action figure tucked under a plant in my garden. Since I don't have children, I give them to the young boys who live next door. That'll show those garden faires.
I must have a healthy population of mischievous garden fairies in my yard.
The garden fairies are very active here, they took no less than 5 right sides of my gardening gloves, leaving me with 5 left sides! Gardening books gone, too.
Well, please tell those daggone fairies to bring back my pruners! I know I had them yesterday, and Sophie swears she didn't take them. And tell them I'm not laughing…they were an expensive pair.
So, Carol, you do know that the "hodag" is a mythical creature of The Northwoods of Wisconsin, right?
That is very funny indeed. I like the garden fairies explanation, I will use it next time I lose my gloves. We hunted for several days for the garden fork and it finally turned up in the grass near the asparagus bed when the lawn mower was going by. I think the fairies chucked it out there just to see the lawn mowing guy slam on the brakes.
I think I may have some indoor fairies that mess around with my glasses too.