Commentary by Christy Solo
This week’s Rogue should be pretty relatable if you have a yard to need to tend to. My backyard is at least .5 acres and two-tired with a “path” (AKA where I walk and now grass doesn’t grow) running from the house, along the retaining wall, and around the end of the wall down to the lower part of the yard.
For five years I’ve trimmed, mowed, pulled up grasses (especially wild oats, their seed pods get buried in dog paws!) cut up and bagged brush piles etc. hauling all my equipment down the wall, around the corner and out into the yard then hauling it all back up along with 40 gal. bags of grass trimmings, cut up branches, pulled up weeds, etc.
Suddenly this year as I carried down my 5 gal. lilac shrub and my 2.5 gal. snowball bush to plant in the lower area, I thought “Boy, I’d sure like a wheelbarrow!”
To clarify, “I’d like a wheelbarrow that works.”
One of the very few items of my parents’ personal property my brother didn’t abscond was their wheelbarrow. He “generously” left that to me. Mind the wheel was flat. Is flat. Will always be flat because it doesn’t hold air. So I’ve just tooled along hauling by hand.
I imagine one can purchase a replacement wheel, but I just…haven’t. Nor have I looked into purchasing a new weelbarrow.
But between the potted shrubs and numerous 40 gal. bags of damp lawn trimmings (if you know, you know) I kind of got over the whole thing here in Year Five.
So I girded myself to check out wheelbarrow prices – figuring it would probably be cost prohibitive – but what the heck.
To be honest, I can’t really tell you how much wheelbarrows cost, because when I did an internet search it also brought up “Garden Carts” and I was SOLD on that idea before I even checked the price of a single barrow.
Part of my lack of enthusiasm for buying a new wheelbarrow has been – often as not, they’re more of a hinderance than help. They’re tippy and wobbly, hard to push uphill and have a propensity for just falling over when you try to take a tight corner (like the one at the bottom of my retaining wall).
Garden carts, I quickly realized, would have none of those issues.
I had a few moments of sticker shock seeing garden carts were priced between $170 and $320 – but I stuck with it, putting on my infamous and well-worn “Internet Bargain Hunting Hat.”
I found my pictured pretty blue cart for a “mere” $84. Okay that isn’t chicken feed – but compared to the vast number of garden cart options – it was a steal. And it’s steel with inflatable tires and removable sides. I very much did not want hard plastic tires (other less expensive carts had those – no thanks – not on my rocky terrain).
I still hesitated, but April was the month to buy – my yard bird population drops off considerably in April, so I have extra literal “seed money” and April is that sweet, sweet month of “Too warm for the pellet stove, too cool for the AC” so the monthly electric bill will be as low as it gets (before it’s meteoric rise from June – Aug. *sob*) so I sucked it up and bought a cart.
While I waited for my cart to be delivered, I became more and more certain it would be a case of “buy cheap, pay twice.” I’m happy to report it was not. It’s a nifty, sturdy little cart which bounces happily over my very uneven yard terrain with ease on its chunky rubber tube-tires.
I also spent an extra amount of “cart comparison” time picking one that had a “turns on a dime” front axle – and it does indeed turn on a dime.
I’m sure one of those chunky tires will get a flat eventually, especially in my yard full of weapons grade blackberry which is largely laying around in “to be cut up” brush piles – but I’m confident I can sort out how to patch a tire when that time comes.
Meanwhile, I guess I’ll turn the ever-flat wheelbarrow into a decorative planter. Tis the season!
