TOOLS OF THE TRADE

I wonder if the garden tools today will last as long as those made many years ago?  Thinking of something for the Wide Wednesday challenge, I saw these tools hanging on the wall of the garage and thought of how many years’ worth of gardening they had seen. 

Many of these garden tools - forks, spades, hoes and the lawn rake - belonged to Mr. HCB’s father and most are still used by Mr. HCB.  However, there are two in particular that Mr. HCB uses - one is the shovel his father used to mix cement, which is the one on the top left and the other is a potato fork on the far right.  This fork has extra wide tines, so that when the potatoes are being dug, the tines won’t, or at least, aren’t supposed to, pierce the potatoes and I can vouch for the fact that the ones dug yesterday were perfectly harvested!

Mr. HCB’s father had an allotment and as he died in 1977, I assume that he had this fork for many years before that - it may even have belonged to his father, so this is probably over 50 years old now and is still going strong.  Every time Mr. HCB uses it, we speak of his father and how much he loved gardening - and of course, I’m sure Mr. HCB inherited that love of gardening from his father.  Such lovely memories.

A garden is a grand teacher. 
It teaches patience 
     and careful watchfulness; 
          it teaches industry 
               and thrift; 
above all it teaches entire trust. 
Gertrude Jekyll

P.S.  Just looked at the theme for WidWed and it is LOW - ah well, these may be up high, but they dig down low!