I mentioned Friday that the way I had my house plants set up made my steps feel more like Italy (at least in my vivid imagination) than New England.

But to achieve the nice effect that am going for when I sit out there–or to ensure that I can relax and not pick at weeds the entire time–there’s a job that I need to do just about this time of year and I need some specific tools for that.

These are my 3 weeding and digging tools (and you can see by the edges of the photo what I will be weeding!)

I generally start with the orange-handled tool. It’s called a crack weeder and it’s really useful for getting in between the bluestone pavers that make up the walkway.

The blue handled tool was gifted to me by its manufacturer. It’s called a Cobrahead. They make it in short and long handled versions. I find it incredibly useful for weeding around plants. It works great in my heavy clay soil too.

The tan handled tool is one of my favorites for weeding larger areas and for digging smaller holes. It cuts through my clay soil like a hot knife through butter.

It’s so efficient that it must be in great demand. This is my third one. I have had 2 stolen from my garage.

And speaking of stolen, these are my pruners. I once had a lovely set of Felco pruners, but they were stolen with the first Asian hand plow. So I no longer buy expensive pruners just to have my garden tools walk away.

I have had to replace the crack weeder once as well. That too mysteriously disappeared.

It’s only the small hand tools that walk (thank goodness, I suppose) but it’s really aggravating to discover that your tool is missing when you need it.

And as for keeping the garage doors open? The Spoiler doesn’t think we have a problem. And since his tools never go missing, he’s not likely to shut them any time soon.

So I will be keeping my Asian hand plow in the house so that I know where to find it when I need it.

Those of you who have been reading for awhile know that I am more likely to leave my cellphone in the house than to take it outside with me. I am definitely not a digital native. So take all of what I say with that in mind.

I had thought that an app for sun and shade, appropriately called Sun and Shade Analyzer, or SASHA for short, might be quite useful in my mostly shady yard. I was particularly interested in the feature that would “predict” shade–in other words, even though it’s just mid-April now, it would tell me what the light would be like when the trees had leafed out.

That’s going to be useful to any gardener. I know that every year, I tend to underestimate the amount of shade that my big dogwood out front throws once it fully leafs out. Luckily, I am only doing so with containers that can be relocated, but imagine if I were planting under it!

But what I found was that I am too impatient to let the app load properly. I stood on my driveway for almost half an hour and it wasn’t fully loaded for my property (no, I don’t have dial up internet. I wonder if trying it on a Saturday in the midst of a pandemic made it slower?)

So while the features might be useful, I can’t stand out in the sun and wait for them. What little I did see looks interesting.

I also was not able to set the date to a date much earlier than May 16. Perhaps that’s full leaf out in my climate (I would argue that it’s a bit earlier, but fine.) I suspect that the point is that the app wanted to show me where the shading would be in full leaf.

But when I was standing under a tree throwing shade and the app is telling me that the shade would be somewhere completely different in a month, that’s when I get a bit skeptical. Hmm….

All in all, this is a useful tool, particularly for those of us that garden in a lot of shade (especially if you’re more patient than I am). It’s $4.99 in the Google play store from Hook Mountain (so far as I know, it is not available for Apple phones yet). And yes, I did buy it.

I will try it again. Perhaps I will try loading it when I get up at the crack of dawn. Less internet traffic….

From here, the clay pot at the top of the 3 pots doesn’t look so bad, does it?

You knew,  however,  with a  title like “more Sabi than wabi” that something was wrong.  This is the top view of the pot–the one that made the Spoiler ask if I were throwing everything away.

This pot is a Guy Wolff pot. But even if it weren’t,  it’s still functional.  I am sure none of you noticed this huge imperfection all summer when I had the mandevilla growing in it. Here’s a shot of what that looked like.

The pink mandevilla is just beyond the geranium/sweet potato vine combo. And yes, you can partly see a chunk out of the side of the pot even in this photo.  But do you? No–not unless I call your attention to it.

And that’s why I keep the pot. It’s one of my favorites.