The story below is an excerpt from our May/June 2018 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
You can bury a lot of troubles by digging in the dirt. — unknown
Spring is the time for digging. I always thought it made me happy because it gave me an excuse to be outside while I exercised. Then, I read a 2007 study that points to specific microbes in garden soil that stimulate production of serotonin. Serotonin is “happy juice” for the soul. According to the research, the microbes enter through skin pores, or small cuts, or we breathe them in whenever we handle dirt. It doesn’t take them long to travel to our brains and help us feel happier.
While digging beds in the spring gives me joy, edging them has historically created the exact opposite effect. My first year of gardening, I decided that rocks would be perfect for the job. I drove out to the river and gathered a truck bed full of flat ones then laid them, like a parade of turtles, along all my borders. My intent was to create an edge I could drive a wheel over as I cut the grass, but the road to lawn mower ruination is paved with river rocks. The flattest ones were soon covered in sod, while their taller cousins spent the summer knocking chunks out of my mower blade.
My next attempt at edging involved the plastic variety found at big box stores. It promised to keep the grass at bay, so I spent a weekend driving the flimsy pieces into the ground with a rubber mallet. The beds looked lovely for the first five weeks. That’s how long it took me to flatten the border with the lawn mower wheels. I am a distracted driver and soon most of the plastic had been chopped to shrapnel and flung out to the far corners of my yard. My dog began digging foxholes whenever the mower growled to life.
In my third year of edging experiments I settled on using wooden railroad ties. At least, that was my plan. But, when you’re married to a frugal farmer, tradition demands that you use something free and at hand. Railroad ties didn’t fall into that category. What we did have were some discarded round fence posts.
Hubby and I spent a weekend lining my flowerbeds with horizontal layers of stacked posts. Actually, he spent time lining them and I spent time pointing out why this was not a great solution. Two thirds of the way into our project, we ran out of the long spikes we were using to hold the whole rickety thing together.
Adhering to our principles of never buying anything if you can find a good substitute left us with an unfinished bed, mostly held together with the temperamental physics of gravity. The horizontal posts remind me of southern belles. They faint onto the lawn at the slightest provocation.
By year four, I gave up on lining flower beds. I was too busy cleaning up the mess left by all my other attempts.
Fast forward to now. I have been gardening for 30 years and I’ve learned that the easiest way for me to maintain a neat border and my sanity is to use a tool designed specifically for that purpose. Not surprisingly, it’s called an “edger.” Like a pizza cutter on steroids, its effect with one pass down the front of each bed is to cut away sod in a neat strip that I lift away and toss into my compost pile. I work without gloves so I can absorb some of those happy microbes.
Now, my flower beds are edgy, and I am not. Two gifts for the price of one. My frugal hubby and I both agree: It doesn’t get much happier than that.
