ONLY IN ITALY?: VIVA L'ESTIRPATORE!

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 ONLY IN ITALY? When they haven't got the garden tool you want, they will offer to make it for you! Let me explain. 

Cape Cod weeder? Nah, never heard of it. This is the land of MACHO power tools. Manual ones, the only kind I like, are deemed for sissies like the English. I remember the howls that greeted my question about where to buy a manual lawn mower. Go back to England, lady! Never mind that I'm not from there. According to these dudes with their giant gas-guzzling weed whackers, I might as well be. 

You have weeds in your Italian garden. Do you know where your estirpatore is? When I first heard that word, I had a FLASH to when I was singing Mendelssohn's "Elijah," the most thrilling moment of which was when the good guys were about to "EXTIRPATE THE FOES."

So it was only fitting when I found out that the name of my most useful garden tool would be the Italian word for extirpator: "estirpatore." 

My garden can't live without one, so when I went back to get what I recalled as the longer, standing version of this hand tool, I was surprised to hear that it doesn't exist. But no matter. Signore Baldini found the right handle, made a hole into which he screwed my new little estirpatore, the last in stock, and 








Presto!
 Bibbety-bobbity-boo!
 Voilà! 
Those weeds are already quaking!

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