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Return of the Robin |
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You don't need a calendar or the groundhog to tell you when Spring is drawing near. Robins begin showing up enmasse and bird songs build to a morning crescendo that rivals your winter alarm clock. These harbingers of spring also tell you that it won't be long for the return of another Spring harbinger, the flip-flop gardener. |
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Flip-flop gardeners are traditionally men. Men who are happy-home-owners in their 30's to 50's.
You might even see a long honey do list dangling from their
back pockets.
I guess you could also call them weekend warriors since their gardening
activities are focused on Saturdays, and maybe even a Sunday
here and there,
if yard work remains undone. Casual Saturday attire includes a ballcap, t-shirt, shorts, and the key parts coining our nickname: flip-flops. An eight or nine a.m. start is the tradition here in Pittsburgh, slightly later than their work-a-day get-up time, but still early enough to catch some morning cool.  Often,
their properties are marked with a pile of mulch dumped on the lawn
or driveway. If things are really severe, it could be a few tons of topsoil.
What separates the men from the boys in the flip-flop brigade
is the type of wheelbarrow they push. It takes a four to six cubic
foot wheelbarrow, complete with a pneumatic tire, to indicate they
are scaper-serious. You really feel sorry for the ones
pushing
those flat metal tray wheelbarrows, bumping along on a small, hard
rubber tire. You have to admire do-it-yourselfers who are willing to invest some 
sweat equity into their homes. And up to this point of the
blog, there has been no harm done after all. Sure, there may be a
smashed toe and sloppy job here and there, but no extended hospital
stays or fatalities. It's actually the next paragraph that causes
my real concern, and the theme of this blog as well. It's hard to count all the Saturday mornings over the past 30 years, while driving around doing landscaping bids, that I've spotted a flip-flop gardener in his front yard spraying a 15 to 25 foot tree with pesticides. He always has maximum dermal exposure (i.e. LOTS of skin exposed) with pump sprayer in hand. He's spraying branches high over his head and the pesticide mist is drifting back gracefully over his entire persona. He probably wonders later why he has those strange pinpoint pupils that indicate pesticide exposure. Maybe this spring we'll finally get a photo of the flip-flop gardener demonstrating his wanton abandon. But you know the pressure is on weekend warriors to just Get it Done!
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