The Hoe-er's Lessons

When we moved to the mountains and grew our first garden, it was large enough that we couldn't afford the straw mulch we had used in our smaller Florida garden. So we were faced with hoeing to keep the weeds down. One day I was visiting with Louise (about whom I wrote in "Mountain Mentors") and saw that she was scraping her hoe through what appeared to be a weedless garden. She stopped work to grin at me.

"I like to keep after them weeds, don't you?" It was a rhetorical question as I would eventually learn. But I was young and foolish.

"Oh, I like to wait till the weeds are bigger -- makes it seem like I'm accomplishing something." As I said, I was young and foolish. And the error of my ways was made manifest the first time I spent hours chopping down and pulling up the fast-growing weed called devil-in-the-garden. Now I run a hoe through the garden at the first sign of little green specks. It takes almost no time and is a lot easier on the back than battling the full-grown weeds. Thus endeth the first lesson.

Now, since hoeing was obviously going to be a way of life -- there was not only the garden but a couple of acres of tobacco that would require attention -- we went and bought some nice new hoes. They were big stout hoes, with big wide blades (intended, we know now, for mixing concrete.) When we took our new purchases down the hill to help Clifford and Louise with their 'baccer, Clifford looked long and hard at them then took hold of one and hefted it appraisingly.

"Well," he said at last, his bright blue eyes twinkling and the corners of his mouth firmly under control, "yeah, boy, you 'uns has got you some hoes."

And he and Louise, with their light little hoes, the blades worn by years of use to ovals about the size of goose eggs, proceeded to work our Florida butts into the ground. Up one row and down another, those two arthritic old folks covered at least twice the ground that we did with our heavy , cumbersome tools.

The picture below is the hoe I use now. Those other ones we save for concrete. Here endeth the second lesson.

And so, sistern and brethern, we learn two important things from hoeing.

Firstly - attack evil when it arises, for the longer you allow it to exist, the deeper its roots will grow and the harder your battle will be.

Secondly- the biggest tool doesn't always do the best job. But you probably knew that.