Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Made in America? I hope so.




Since I can't go too long without getting in the dirt, I've been cleaning up my mom's backyard during my stay. There's no love lost between my mother and her flower beds ("I only garden because I like the results," she always says) so her assortment of gardening tools are ragtag at best.

Lucky for us, we have a generous extended family in


Bowie who willingly shares their stuff. When I mentioned to Uncle Bobby that I needed to prune the shrubs, he showed up the next day with Aunt Barbara's vintage pruning shears. They belonged to her dad, Richard Ennis, who was an enthusiastic gardener at her girlhood home on Hemlock Street in Washington, D.C. Aunt Barbara guesses the shears are at least 70 years old.

"He used them to prune the rose bushes in our yard," she remembers. "We had lots of roses, hydrangeas, and snowball bushes."

I've been junking for decades and never thought to keep an eye out for vintage hand tools. These shears are made of steel by a company called Durex. (Could it be the same company that makes condoms? Doubtful!) I love the details on the shears, especially the lock on the handle.

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