Japanese Garden Tools

With the rain this past winter, the grass in our backyard is growing like crazy. Here's a photo below...



I was looking for a "tool" to help me clear this grass. Yes, in Southern California, there are fire regulations to clear hillsides -- even though, the green grass looks quite nice to me.

In Little Tokyo (downtown Los Angeles) at the Anzen Hardware store, I found a solution that I couldn't find at Home Depot. It's a Japanese garden tool called a "kama" (sickle). I tested it out, and it worked perfectly for me. Also great for harvesting vegetables.



I'm not a fan of noisy weed wackers; it's a grate on my nerves. I have one, but it's messy, and I can picture the grass getting tangled up in the machinery.

On the other hand, a quiet "hand-powered" tool like the kama is a beautiful optimized technology that's been around for hundreds of years. It's hard to improve it. In a meditative work sort of way, the experience of cutting grass with the kama could be "relaxing".

Anyway, now that I have "the tool", I need to get busy!