As you wish

I think that a sign of True Love is not if one’s spouse comes bearing gifts of roses or jewelry or chocolate, but if instead said spouse makes a special trip to the hardware store to buy his Beloved a small sledgehammer.

So now I have a new toy to play with.  One that I am in the process of using to pound the shit out of the posts that are part of the deer fence I am installing.  Because I am hell-bent on keeping the fucking deer out of my yard this year.

I did my first planting of the spring yesterday and I have no intention of sharing this year’s bounty with Odocoileus virginianus.

I have another new toy too, only this one I bought for myself:

I think I just felt a frisson, a passing sensation of excitement, roll through the blogosphere.  I can tell that y’all are just as excited about this as I am.

You’re probably wondering why I am just now buying this beauty, this Lexus (not quite as nice as a Beamer, but better than a Toyota) of a wheelbarrow.  I mean, by now, having owned three houses over the past 15 years, surely I must already have a wheelbarrow.

I did, however, it wasn’t as reliable as I’d like it to be.  Certainly, it was functional and got the job done, but only if the job didn’t involve any sort of hills or minor inclines or even dips in the landscape.  And only if the job wasn’t too heavy or too bulky.  And definitely not if I didn’t mind said wheelbarrow tipping over with far too much frequency.

I’ve been cursing — and I do mean loudly, thoroughly, passionately CUSSING — the old wheelbarrow for years.  We bought it shortly after we bought our first house — a time when we had very little money at our disposal and even fewer skills.  At the time, I was interested in piddling around in the flower beds, but I didn’t actually know jack diddly squat about anything.  So I got what was basically a dilettante’s yard cart.

I suffered with that godawful wheelbarrow for years, including last year when Pete and I (okay, mostly me) moved four cubic yards of mulch uphill from the pile in the front of our yard to the various places that I wanted mulched.  Our entire property tilts upwards from the front to the back on a pretty steady slope.  It’s not a major hill, but enough of an angle that made hauling anything in the old wheelbarrow a Sisyphean endeavor.  I can’t tell you how many times the wheelbarrow tipped over a full load of mulch.

What finally did it for me was my first post-Snowpocalypse gardening adventure last weekend.  I bought two packages of peat moss, which I then had to transport from the momvan to the backyard.

Normally I just jauntily hoist a bag of mulch over my shoulder like a pirate carrying off his plunder, but peat moss is simply too heavy for me to carry.  I couldn’t even get it into the old wheelbarrow without Pete’s help, whereupon the wheelbarrow waited all of six seconds before flipping over.  Pete helped me again and then I began shiteous task of pushing the wheelbarrow up to the backyard … while groaning like a person who is severely constipated.  Remember, it’s all uphill.  Oh, and there was still a fair amount of snow on the ground.  I ended up pretty much dragging the wheelbarrow across the snow like a sled, because the wheels didn’t work in that mess.

Finally, in a huge fit of pissiness, I picked up the infernal contraption and heaved it across the yard.

For the second package of peat moss, I waved the white flag and just flipped it end-over-end around the garage, up to the garden gate, and then through the snow to far end of the backyard.

I bought the new badass wheelbarrow yesterday and it is a delight, an absolute dream, I tell you.  That bad boy rolled uphill carrying three bags of mulch AND a variety of tools and never once even shuddered on me.

I lurve it.

Almost as much as I lurve my husband for getting me the new sledgehammer.  Now I finally understand the Peter Gabriel song.