The Garden Shedde

At the easternmost edge of my parents’ lawn is a magnificent sugar maple tree. This particular tree is set apart by its hulking size. It stands fifty feet tall, has a canopy seventy-five feet from branch tip to branch tip and the trunk is four feet in diameter. The bark is rough and craggy with deep crevices just perfect for fingers and toes to find a good grip, and so it is that the maple tree invites her climbers.

From age six to eighteen, most of my time was spent either in or under the maple tree. I remember the shape of my favorite branches, the texture and smell of the bark. Many happy hours were spent on my swing, until winter came that is. In the winter my swing was swallowed up by the snow. In spring, as the snow receded my swing became the perfect vantage point from which to spot eager crocuses. In summer the breeze while swinging was refreshing and in autumn the swing was the perfect way to launch myself into red, gold and brown crunchy maple leaves that smelled of sun, grass, dirt and new decay.

The inevitable loss of the maple tree will change more than the landscape; it will change the dynamics of “home.”

Several years ago I owned a house that went through a tornado and damaged a lot of the house. One of the major repairs had to be done to the kitchen. Once we got everything that had to be done, we looked at the space and decided we could use a pot rack and my friend and roommate almost croaked when I told him I could build one out of aluminum. His statement was something like this; “right.”

I had worked in a company that made security cages out of aluminum and one of the things we did was built the jigs to create the right bends in the material. So I measured the space and designed the pot rack on paper, built the jigs, drilled the desired holes where I wanted them, took a round file and cleaned the holes up and made them smooth before I bent the aluminum strip to form the design I had decided on. I joined the two ends together with a couple of simple small bolts, nuts and washers. I hung the rack from the ceiling with nice chain and the pots and pans with s-hooks. What I built for less than $50.00 was going for $350 or more at cooking stores. Simple, easy and done.

Don’t be afraid to seek landscaping help when and if you need it. Many times it will be less expensive to have a professional crew come in and do certain things like build a deck, pour a patio or install a water feature hen it is for you to spend the time and money trying to get it all done. They have the manpower and the experience and can get it done, in many cases, quicker, cheaper and better.

What I have found to be a life saver is the time I save by hiring out professionals. In what I do, time is money so any time I save means I am usually either making more money or spending it with my family. The other huge plus for me is what I call “the frustration factor”. This is the frustration that I go through trying to figure out the best way to go about a job I am not familiar with by doing internet research or reading through magazines and books. This alone has taken up more time than some of the projects I have done! The bottom line is to get the help that you need before you create a disaster!

One would think on Labor Day that no one should be working. It seems very wrong to me that anyone would be expected to work on a holiday that is meant to celebrate the “American worker”. What I have come to realize is that what every holiday seems to really be about is consumerism. No matter the history or original meaning of the day it is now about sales and getting you to buy into them. If we would not participate in holiday sales schemes then maybe all those people who are made to work those days would be able to go home and celebrate a day off with their families.

That also goes for the restaurants and grocery stores around the country. As wonderful as that may sound, it will never happen because we are a very selfish people by nature. If we want to eat out or go shopping then we believe we should be able to even though it causes someone else to work on that day. Why should we care as long as we are off? Let’s rename the holiday, Celebration of the Laborers we Value. After all, the people in retail and service industries are some of the lowest paid on the totem poles and they really need to work.

A few months ago my wife took a trip with a friend and her two year old on a bus so he could have the experience of riding a city bus. They thought it would take about two and a half hours to go up on the bus to a store and eat lunch and come back to our area. The trip actually took closer to six hours and that doesn’t include the time to and from the bus stop to our home.

If this is what families have to do every time they go shopping just think about how much time they spend getting the necessities taken care of each week. Do they have to get on a bus to get groceries; get to work every day; shop for clothes for them and their children? There are a plethora of things I do every week and never think about how I am going to get to and from wherever my errand takes me. Just the errands I do for the kids activities is mind-blowing to say the least so I understand if under privileged kids have to say no to activities outside of school. I’m not sure what can be done but in our spread out suburban society we need to be more thankful for the cars we have to drive and more sympathetic to those who don’t have them.