The Shed

The Shed
The Shed

Friday, December 30, 2011

To shed, or not to shed?

BASIC SHED

You are wondering if you need a shed to compliment the new vegetable garden. Strictly speaking, no, you can get along without one. The plant food, sprayer, trowel and weeder can bide their time in the cellar, it isn’t too inconvenient to bring them back as forth as needed. The same is true for the baskets, sunscreen, insect repellent, seeds, pots, transplants, trellising material and stakes. And as for the hoes, rakes, shovels, spades and pickaxes? They’ve been content in the garage up until now; why not permit them to remain there along with the ice melt, lawnmower and croquet set?

Of course you need a shed! A large, roomy comfortable shed with windows, power and running water and if it’s a really big shed, perhaps even a pot bellied stove to contrast your own ripped and chiseled physique. Because you know what will happen if you continue to run back and forth from garage to garden to cellar to rhubarb patch and back again. You will waste precious gardening time. You will become frustrated. You may even take it out on the kohlrabi although the sort of morally crippled individual that takes such misplaced vengeance upon sprouts and seedlings is unworthy of a vegetable garden, let alone of a gardening shed.

Worst of all you may lose a tool or other important commodity. This is a serious enough crisis when a trowel is misplaced in April, only to arise phoenix like from the mulch during fall clean up, long after you have purchased a new one with a fire engine red handle for simple location. But then, consider the rake. Never let your guard drop around the rake, and always remember that the rake is not your friend. But once misplace the common garden rake, perhaps amongst the burgeoning turnip crop and when you return days later, watering can in tow, one false step and the rake will strike. Soaring from its hiding place amidst the greens straight for the very tip of your nose with the accuracy and cold blooded ferocity of a Balinese Leaping Viper a rake attack leaves a lasting impression. For days you’ll sport a bulbous schnozz as plump, round and crimson as those early girl tomatoes of which you are so inordinately proud.

Folks will point at you and laugh, and whisper disparaging whispers behind your back.

But not if you have a garden shed! Folks with a garden shed never stand, spent and weary in the doorway of the garage thinking – although they know better – that the rake will be safe enough overnight, and there is no need to schlep 50 yards to the garden to retrieve it. They know the rake hangs on its assigned nail in the shed, thinking malignant rakish thoughts certainly but powerless to act upon them.

You need a shed, make no mistake. And soon I'm going to tell you how to make a damn good one!