What I treasure My trowel
There is something gently Neolithic about working with a trowel, something that connects me the holder, nature and time – a tool that has changed little in the thousands of years of its existence. What started maybe as a bladed bone has matured over time into something that is now a scoop-bladed wooden-handled implement designed to move soil.
Even when a spade or shovel would get the job done in less time, the trowel is my tool of choice for digging a hole. Time is not always the issue when digging – for me, it’s much more about the possibility of discovery, along with being outside feeling the warmth of the sun as I do it.
Recently, I planted a tree, a prunus, a tree promising vibrant pink blossom in spring and glorious tints of foliage in autumn. It needed a bucket-sized hole. A spade would have made short shrift of the task but then much of the pleasure would have been lost in doing so. My trowel allows me to get up close to that which I am digging.
Posturaly, I like to make myself comfortable, to better enjoy the brief encounter between me and the ground, something a long-handled spade will not permit. I will maybe lie on the ground propped up on one arm allowing me to dig, scrape and twist the soil beneath the blade, releasing the warm sweet scent of freshly turned earth and revealing things that have maybe lain undisturbed for longer than I’ve existed. A shard of glass, worn smooth and opaqued through the passage of time or a stone, stark white and veined, ancient and long cocooned beneath the surface. Forgotten bulbs rediscovered, exposed, showing signs of spring beyond the winter yet to come, their tendrils of fleshy white roots harvesting moisture from the ground in readiness to burst forth with new growth in its given season.
For me, the humble stumpy trowel gives me the privilege of seeing these things in remarkable detail laying before me the history of time and the beauty of nature here in the present together with the promise of a future by what is to be planted in a way that its long-handled cousin does not allow.
A spade has its uses, but also a tendency to put pressure on joints and blisters on palms, but the unassuming trowel – my trowel with its lack of leverage and its smooth time-worn handle – nestles comfortably in my grip and together, we gently discover the world beneath the turf.
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