Girls love silk and leatherBy Maureen Gilmer
Jan. 15, 2007 — I'm going to mangle Thomas Carlyle's words a bit and state: "Woman is a tool-using animal. Without tools she is nothing; with tools she is all."
Whether it's knitting needles or a carving knife, women use more tools every day than most men. And yet women are most often overlooked by toolmakers. When they do make tools for women, they either give them bright color or downsize them for smaller hands, neither of which does much to help you get the job done.
Women don't gloat over their tool collection like men do. Girls want just a few good tools that do what needs to get done. Oddly enough, the two best garden tools for girls have guy names: Leatherman and Pocket Boy. Both are rarely found in stores and best purchased online.
Leatherman makes the do-it-all Swiss army knife of the tool world. A new model, the Hybrid, has just hit the market and my testing has proved it's worth every penny. The original Leathermans are needle-nose pliers that fold down to a compact size a little larger than a cigarette pack. The Hybrid does the same, but it's for gardeners and swaps the pliers for razor sharp full-size pruning blades.
The Hybrid combines a high-quality hand pruner with wire cutters, a grafting knife, bark lifter, saw, weed remover, two kinds of screwdrivers, sprinkler tool and bottle opener. The handles are encased in soft rubber, making a comfortable grip for extended use.
It's like a toolbox in your pocket that gives every woman exactly what she needs in yard and garden. I found it fits easily into the side pockets of my loose cargo-style gardening pants or in my coat pockets. I still keep my standard pruners for big jobs, but now the Hybrid is always close at hand for convenience whenever I go out to putter. It means I don't have to scrounge around for a screwdriver to adjust a sprinkler, a wire cutter to fix a fence or a weeding tool to pop a tap-rooted weed out of the ground.
The Hybrid isn't cheap, selling at about $75. Use the Leatherman dealer locator at www.leatherman.com to find online or local retailers.
I'm always hunting down my long-handled loppers to make larger cuts than my hand clippers can manage. But loppers are big so they can't be conveniently dropped into a pocket to remain close at hand.
And rounding up those loppers during pruning season always was a real hassle until I discovered Silky Saws. This Japanese company utilizes ancient sword-making traditions to create the best laser cut saws on the market. They are the preferred tool of arborists and tree surgeons.
I'm always cutting the tough, fibrous stems of palm-tree fronds. They force me to drag the loppers around for just these jobs, and the scissors' blades never cut them cleanly. When I first tested the Silky saw blades on the palms, I was amazed at how easily they cut and, moreover, the cut edge was clean and crisp. Since making the change from lopper to saw I have been able to manicure the palms and hardwood trees better than ever before.
I use the Pocket Boy model because it folds like a pocketknife and yet has a six-inch saw blade. The handle of soft rubber is easy to grip with minimal effort. Fine laser-edged teeth will get through virtually anything in seconds. The beauty of this tool, like the Hybrid, is that I can drop it in my pocket when it's not in use. Find Silky Saws online at www.silkystore.com.
(Maureen Gilmer is a horticulturist and host of Weekend Gardening. E-mail her at mo@moplants.com. For more information, visit: www.moplants.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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