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My neighbor watched me build a raised bed and gave me one piece of advice that stuck
I was out back last April building a 4x8 raised bed from cedar planks. My neighbor Bob stops by, watches me for a minute, and says "you're gonna want to line the inside with hardware cloth or the gophers will eat everything in 3 weeks." I laughed it off because I'd never seen a gopher around here. Sure enough, about a month later my tomato plants started wilting and I found tunnels running right under the bed. Dug it all up, stapled some 1/4 inch hardware cloth to the bottom, and replanted. Stuff cost me 15 bucks and maybe 2 hours of my Saturday. Has anyone else had one of those "I told you so" moments where you ignored advice and paid for it?
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umab351d ago
Kept thinking about this all day after reading it. I've noticed this pattern where the people who've been gardening or doing anything for decades give advice that sounds old-fashioned or silly (like hardware cloth, seriously?) but it's usually because they've already made every single mistake you're about to make. They know the exact failure points because they patched their own beds and fences and roofs thirty years ago, you know? It's like there's a whole secret manual of "stuff that will go wrong" and the only way to get it is to either listen humbly or learn the hard way like we all end up doing. I'm trying to get better at just nodding and saying "okay, I'll do that" instead of arguing, because usually the person offering the advice has the scars to prove it.
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