Monday, July 14, 2008

Gardening Injury

I don't like to water my perennial borders. The plants need to be tough to make it around here. This means plants that can live on very little extra water, so I rely on native and adapted plants. There are no ferns, no hydrangea, no hostas, or any other water hungry plants in my perennial beds. At this time of year these plantings look pretty pitiful. I have really let them go and the weeds were pretty bad. The ground was so dry that I had to turn on the water hose, soak the ground, and then pull the weeds. It is a pretty effective weeding method, water hose in one hand, weed with the other. It is also pretty fast, the weeds just come right out.

So anyway, I was watering and weeding and watering and weeding and then it happened. I pulled up hard on a particularly stubborn weed, the weed came free, and my elbow went right up into my most thorny rosebush. I ended up with several rose thorns in my upper arm. One especially big one right in the softest part right above my elbow. OwwWWWwwww.

Got any weeding techniques to share?
Any gardening related injuries?

7 comments:

  1. That sounds painful! Once I snipped off the tip of my thumb while pruning something or other. It bleed a lot. I got light headed. Wing Nut yelled at me for not wearing gloves.
    --Curmudgeon

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  2. Ouch! Gotta be careful with those forceful weeds or pick a big soft bed of marigold to fall into. :)My biggest injuries come from broken glass in the gardens. I always get sliced up when hand pulling weeds.

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  3. OUCH! Ouch, ouch, ouch. My biggest garden-related "injuries" are poison-ivy and yellowjacket related. Though there was that time I fell off the ladder and tried to stabilize myself by grabbing for the wall, impaling my hand on a rusted nail. Guess my tetanus shot's good for another 20 years! Hope Manly Man or one of the Monkeys got those mean thorns out.

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  4. son of a... that does sound horrible. Well at least you can type?!? Looking on the bright side.

    Lets see, other than sunburning the top of my head... my self esteem is fairly injured. ;)

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  5. Well, my memory's not what it used to be. I know I've hurt myself plenty of times while gardening although nothing in particular is coming to mind right now. I was voted class clutz for a reason though.

    Maybe the pain was just too much to bear so I blocked the memories out of my mind?

    I hope you're feeling better.

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  6. Okay, Y'all are scaring me. A cut off finger tip, glass in flower beds, and a rusty nail through a palm, ahhhhhh. I am going to have bad dreams.

    Okay james, that was just funny.

    Cinj, I wish i had selective memory. Then I could forget all of the times I have fallen in my garden.

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  7. I've got a weeding tip: mulch! I like to use horse manure, at least 3" thick and just cover the weeds to smother them. It's fun too, "now you see em', now you don't"! :) Injuries? Heh, only if there's a stiff rake around-I'll step on it and whack myself in the forehead...EVERY time!

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