Garden Warriors and Warrioresses

Okay, I made up that last word in the title, but the English language is alive and constantly evolving. Just doing my part to keep the trend going. There's no other way to praise the sturdy cultivators of the soil who responded to the Twitter question: "What's Your Least Favorite Garden Chore?'" Not even the dubious virtual Wilted Dandelion Award deterred these salts of the earth, so without further ado, here are the winners in the various categories:

Most Exotic Gardening Adventure Award goes to witchy woman who tweets as kitwitch. "Oh, oh! The worst chore in the garden is picking Japanese beetles off of plants one by one!!!!!" Obviously the five exclamation points worked in her favor to impress the judge.

Weirdest Rural Problem Award goes to Jessamyn Tuttle who creatively tweets as jessamyntuttle. "Removing live mice from the compost heap definitely tops the list." The mind boggles at the concept. Nice work, Jessamyn.


Most Complicated Gardening Problem Award goes to Galen Kindley. He tweets as GalenKindley (Do you know Jessamyn Tuttle?) "Pulling barbed weeds through gravel where you have to dig through the rocks, grab the stem with barbs, squeeze, and pull." You're a man on a mission, Galen.

The Chameleon Award is bestowed to Elizabeth S Craig (I sense a Twitter trend here, as she tweets as ElizabethSCraig. "Pulling weeds! Or maybe, determining which are weeds and which are supposed to be there." (Note from The Practical Preserver: Why do you always recognize a potential weed as actually a good plant after you've hoicked it out of the ground? Why the mind-body disconnect???)

The Hoe and Cultivator Award (Also known as the Got Tines? Award) will be shared between Lisa Bedford who tweets as TheSurvivalMom: "How could the least fave NOT be pulling weeds?? LOL" and Yvonne Cunnington who tweets as CountryGardener: "Have to say weeding, cuz like housework, it's never really done." Even now, the little suckers are breaking through the soil and plotting their evil deeds.

CountryGardner has ribboned in two events here, and if you count watering, she's a triple threat: "Watering: I hate hose wrangling. Much cursing done." She also will share the Crimped Hose, Trampled Plants, Potty Mouth, and Valium Award with my Facebook buddy Margaret Julia Rothauge: "My pet peeve is dragging around hoses and having them kink up, I mean I lose it!"

The Practical Preserver comments: I tend to resemble an Indian snake charmer, with coils of hose wrapped around my neck and shoulders, as I try to keep the hoses off the plants while dragging them from spigot to spigot. (the hoses, not the plants)

The Garden Humanitarian and Angst Award has been won by Tweeters dorisandjilly: "Definitely pulling out diseased plants. Cut off in the prime of their youth!" and Julia Scott who cleverly tweets as bargainbabe: "My least favorite garden chore is dealing with bugs. Getting rid of them w/out killing the plants is grrrrrrr."

The Horses Sweat, Men Perspire, and Women Glow (also known as the Dig We Must Award) goes to Claire Brown across The Pond. She tweets as Plantpassion: "Digging when it's hot is my least favourite garden chore."

And last, but definitely not least, one must tidy up after the day's work. So The Have You Seen My Rake, Hoe, Cultivator, Trowel, or Whatever Award goes to Chris McLaughlin tweeting as Suburban_Farmer: "Cleaning my garden tools!"

Thanks to all who contributed. This was fun. We're out of space, so the cherry pie post will post on Friday.