The Business End

Day 204: The term isn't used much in today's vocabulary, but fifty years ago, you might have heard a shovel described as an "idiot stick," which is to say it has a blade on one end and an idiot on the other. In some regions, it applied to other manual tools as well, the principle being exactly the same regardless of what the "business end" might look like. I tend to think of weed-wrenches in much the same light. You have to be a few crackers short of a barrel to volunteer for a weed-wrenching work party, and I guess I qualify as prime crumb material. I spent the morning pulling Scotch broom with a weed wrench as part of a Nisqually Land Trust restoration project at Powell Creek near Yelm. The idea is simple: you set the jaws so that the stem of the offending weed is between them, then step on the tip of the tool and pull back on the lever which closes the jaws on the stalk. Once the stalk is pinched (sometimes not as easy as it sounds), you lean on the lever using the ground as your fulcrum, and if Archimedes is smiling, the earth moves as the roots are withdrawn. That's the theory, anyway. In practice, it's never that simple. The jaws slip, the stalk breaks, leaving the roots in the ground, thereby ensuring that you'll have a job again next spring. That said, we removed a lot of the nasty stuff, but it may be days before I can stand upright again.