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The Lop Of Luxury

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This alternative to a chain saw is lighter, safer - and still does the trick on thick branches.

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 19, 2009

Updated: 02/20/2009 03:56 pm

Some girls want dinner out, roses and jewelry for Valentine's Day.

I asked for - and received - a Black & Decker Alligator Lopper, an electric pruner I've had my eye on for months.

Its 4-inch cut capacity is built to blow through thick tree branches, the kind you can't get with a manual lopper. That's why I wanted it. But it makes a heck of a hedge clipper if you don't have one - and I don't. Or didn't.

"Are you sure you're not bringing a gun to a knife fight?" my husband asked, when he saw me buzzing off the tops of our cold-damaged dwarf ixoras.

Uh, yeah, but ...

The Alligator works. And it works fast. I got a nice straight cut in a quarter of the time it would have taken with my pruners.

So now my shoulders are a little stiff, but not my poor arthritic hands, which usually ache after a weekend of gardening.

The Alligator weighs only 6.5 pounds. It is much lighter than the chain saws I've checked out at Lowe's and Home Depot, and it feels safer. You have to physically open the jaws to get to the blade, and you have to use the trigger to make it cut.

The downside, of course, is that you have to drag a power cord around behind you, but I adjusted to that pretty quickly. I also managed to remember to unplug the thing before reaching in to pull out tiny twigs that got stuck in the jaws. This made my hubby - who lost a digit to a chipper decades ago - very happy.

UPDATE ON COLD-HARDY PLANTS

After I ran my list of which plants made it through our recent cold temps - and, more significantly, which didn't - I heard from a few readers about what happened in their gardens. Here's an update:

Azaleas good; ixoras bad: How could I forget to list azaleas on my keeper list? They're one of the few plants that bloomed right through the cold. I have only one, but it looks fabulous. I've seen azaleas all over the 'hood; some look a little shabby and thin on leaves, but their bright flowers are a welcome bit of color. Yvonne Brajevich of Land O'Lakes wrote that she covered many of her plants with layers of fleece from Home Depot and they still suffered, especially her ixoras. Her azaleas made it through just fine, as did her phlox, dianthus and pansies.

Bird of Paradise: The photo we ran with The Dirt on Feb. 8 was, of course, a heliconia, not a Bird of Paradise. (They look a little bit alike, but they're from two different families.) Gardeners are telling us that their Birds of Paradise weathered the cold very well; their heliconias didn't.

To wait or not to wait: Nancy Martz of Carrollwood wrote that she can hardly wait until mid-March to get out in her yard and prune away the brown leaves and sickly stems. We're hearing from a lot of gardeners in the wait debate. Obviously, I couldn't hold off. But here's the big news: Neither did my co-blogger, Penny. For all her preaching about patience, she changed her mind about putting her pruners away until spring. To find out why, check out our blog on TBO.com.

Kim Franke-Folstad

Come play in The Dirt at TBO.com, Keyword: Dirt. We provide all the tools.

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