I've Got Dibs! (dibbers, that is)

After all the enthusiasm over my original Digital Dibber (http://gardentenders.com/projects/765), I decided to carve a few more; it’s only taken me nearly two years to get to it. But I got Busy to help me some and we hacked out four new ones in two weeks.

The original is the one on the far left in picture #1 (the one with the dirty fingernail) – that one, and the new one that looks basically the same, are modeled after my own, most-used digit, of course.

“Going In Green”

“The Earl”
The wood used for this one came from some tree/shrub thing that was being pulled out of my wife’s grandparents’ yard in Anderson, California, after a larger tree fell on it during a storm about ten years ago (“wife to justjoel, “you saved a stick for 10 years? Justjoel to wife, “No, I saved this stick for ten years.”) Grandpa Earl (a fantastic gardener himself) called it “teakwood,” but I doubt it is related to the tropical wood we know by that name. However, it is a bit darker, very fine grained, cured well, and was a pleasure to carve. It was my initial plan to carve a cane out of it for Earl, but I never got to it before he left us.

“Lady Finger”
My practice painting of the French nails (pic#3) turned out better that the actual, I think, but I still like the elegant, slender, well manicured look of this one. Carved from the handle of a re-purposed bar-b-que fork, I was pleased how the handle of the dibber looks vaguely lipstick or mascara tube-ish. I don’t have a leather tie on this one yet as I don’t have the right beads for it, but I know where to get them.

“The Carrot Shtick”
As most normal dibbers are shaped like this, I thought I’d add a bit of fun and encouragement for the dirt by using something that eventually comes out of the ground by… well, you get the idea, I’m sure (ba-dum, tchsshh).

Most of these are mainly meant to use for planting seeds and small starts, they aren’t heavy-duty enough for anything much bigger, but I have plans to carve some larger ones as well, all with a bit of whimsy, of course. I’m working on another carrot (pic#5), and have material for others, large and small (pic#6) that I’ve been collecting over the past two years (or longer – heh).

-- There's a box?