When my youngest child was in preschool at age 3, he won a pencil for something, and he told his teacher, “My daddy can put it in the garden!”
Which made no sense to the teacher, but it does make sense, sort of, if you know my son’s daddy.
I use pencils to mark things in the garden. When I plant a root that’s going to grow into something, I stick in a single pencil. For row crops, I use two pencils to mark the ends of the rows and then tie a string between them.
I mean, I could use a Contractor’s Grade Row Marker or a My Little Hobby Farm Organic Row Marker (either available at the local home center for $4.99 each), or I can use pencils I buy at Walmart at $3 for 20. They’re yellow and easy to see, and they are cheap and expendable.
So the lad likes to work in his garden with his father, and he cannot think of anything he’d rather do with a pencil that he won than to use it in the garden.
Although this is three years ago, I’m pretty sure he feels much the same way today, since I was working in one of the garden beds today, clearing away some weeds and old growth on the asparagus (and marking the asparagus with fresh pencils), and the boy was very upset that I was planting in the garden without him.
