"Two wrongs may not make a right but a thousand wrongs make a writer.”

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Prose Before Hoes

I have a new hoe. 

Hoes are essential tools for the organic gardener, from the standard (grandma hoe) to stirrup hoes, collinear hoes, trapezoid hoes and hand hoes, all in different sizes for tackling different weeds. Then, reigning above the affordable, there's the almighty Glaser Wheel Hoe, a 12" oscillating hoe that has always been priced out of my reach. I secretly covet it as I browse early spring catalogs and think golly wouldn't that be sweet?  Did you even know there were so many hoes? 

But even in spring when the garlic sprigs have burst through the soil, promising summer, the pen pulls at my heart.  My take on this popular meme (Prose Before Hoes) often paired with Shakespeare's likeness on shirts and mugs, is literal.  All this cute little saying means to the writers amoungst us who deal in dirt is that instead of toiling in the garden, working up a sweat, we'd prefer to bury ourselves in writing. If we struggling poets and writers/gardeners didn't put our prose before hoes how would we ever have time to write masterpieces and assemble chapbooks? 

I suppose if I devoted more time to seedlings and markets of a different sort, I could  spring for a Glaser Hoe. But then I'd have to enlist more help and reward them accordingly and, oh well, you see the dilemma of a small time gardener who secretly wants to dabble in words the day long and live frugally.

Happy Planting-a-Tree-Earth Day, but other than the 22nd, I'm going to try to keep my prose before my hoe!!

Over and out to the dirt I go.




2 comments:

Sherry Blue Sky said...

I miss my gardening days. Now I have potted flowers which I enjoy tending through the summer. But once, there was an entire back yard garden, from which I fed my hungry children. I think we are all going to need back yard gardens in the coming years.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Hi Sherry,
True, I had trouble finding some of my usual seeds last year because more people were suddenly putting in gardens. I can't imagine not having one, but I, too, would always have to grow flowers. And tomatoes!
Thanks.