I may sound like an old man when I say this but I miss my Blackberry.
I’m not speaking of the vining plant that produces the delicious fruit but my smart phone which has been a part of me for the past eight years.
Unfortunately I have been forced over to the dark side and now have an iPhone in the spot where my old pal hung comfortably and reliably from my belt all those years.
Now, eight years in today’s thinking is a relatively long time especially with technology racing ahead as it is, but when I think we had the same old dial telephone in our family home for 30 years before it was superseded with a new-fangled push button model in the mid-’70s, eight years is relatively short.
After that first push-button phone, it took about 15 years before we went to a new system that did all sorts of incredible things.
About this time, around 1995, I got my first cellular phone which was about the size of a Kleenex box.
Three years later, new phones appeared that were getting smaller and smarter about every two years, until I ended up with my beloved Blackberry in 2007.
It did all I asked of it including access to the Net and I could marry it nicely with my PC, schedule all my appointments and even get all the info on the most recent golf tournament and new plant introductions.
Last April, I was told I could not use my old friend anymore because it had obsolete technology and was not compatible with the new stuff, so I purchased an updated version of the same phone I had had for almost seven years just to avoid the learning curve associated with a completely different platform.
Fourteen months later my new phone began crashing and doing all sorts of annoying things and thus my plunge into the latest technology; well actually three-year-old technology.
You see the new phones are now becoming larger and larger, so it actually seems like you are carrying around a small computer screen.
The three-year-old phone I got is still quite a bit larger than my BB but it is the smallest thing I could get barring a flip phone.
After having the new phone now for about three days, I am actually warming up to it and I will survive.
Thank goodness I have been using an iPad for the past three years so I know my way around the screen.
Now how does this relate to gardening you say?
It really doesn’t other than the name Blackberry.
However I have to say in this hectic world we live in, where everything is in fast motion and the new gets old very quickly, gardening is still the same medicine it has been for centuries allowing us to take a step back and embrace the natural processes that have been here all along without change.
The things my mother taught me while working in the garden are the same things her mother taught her and are the same things I am teaching my granddaughter Ellie.
Although I must say I appreciate being able to record it all on my smart phone and send it to my sister in real time. Oh well!
