Welcome to Garden Gossip, a quarterly dispatch where I share all the latest dirt on the goings-on in and around my garden.
**Scene 1** Bobette With a Pickaxe at Dusk
I was standing there, watching my compadre, Liliana, swing a pickaxe at the ground like it owed her money.
“Lil, you don’t play,” I said, half in awe.
She didn’t even look up. “Yeah, well, it’s man work, but we gotta do it.”
That moment has been lodged in my mind ever since. Because that’s exactly what it feels like being a woman who gardens, landscapes, and maintains her own yard in the South. There’s the work, and then there’s the commentary. The assumptions. The surprise.
Apparently, a woman like me isn’t supposed to do this kind of work. But here I am, sweaty, sun-kissed, covered in soil and choosing to do it anyway.
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