Three Sisters Garden

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, it’s spring here and we’re planting tomatoes and peppers at home.

But we don’t have enough room for a three sisters garden.

And I wonder if you knew what a three sisters garden is.

A three sisters garden?

Have you ever heard of that?

No, but I love it. Three sisters.

Yeah, what do you think it might be?

We only have like this tiny strip of green like next to our parking lot

And we’re planting stuff there.

Three sisters.

Do you make a list of what you’re going to plant and then check off?

Three Russian sisters?

No.

No, it comes from Native American tradition of planting three types of plants together.

Corn, beans, and rice.

Corn, beans, and squash.

Yes, yes.

And so the beans grow up the corn stalk, and the squash kind of shades the ground to keep the weeds away,

And then they grow together in harmony, and they’re all Native American species in general.

That’s right.

That’s right.

I toured some canyons back in the southwest back in the day,

And they were always talking about how they grew corn, beans, and squash.

Yeah, it’s a three-sisters garden.

It’s a term that’s widely used in gardening manuals and even cookbooks

Just because you can also cook those three ingredients together

And make some pretty good casseroles or pretty good stir-fry and that sort of thing.

I’ve got some other new words here that have come across my radar

As I’ve been reading the news and kind of keeping an eye out.

Do you keep up much with what’s going on in the San Francisco Bay Area?

Only through you.

Well, the transit police here, the BART police, BART is the name of the transit system, are adopting what they’re calling a weak hand draw.

A weak hand draw.

What do you think that means?

A weak hand draw.

They act like they’re drawing their weapon?

I don’t know.

That’s something like that.

But they draw the other hand?

No, that wouldn’t be very smart, would it?

No, you’ve got it exactly right.

What?

Well, they’ve had some accidents where the transit police were a little too ready to pull their tasers.

So what you do is you hang the weapon in the holster in such a way that you forced your weakest hand to pull it.

So if you’re right-handed, you might hang your weapon in its holster on the right with the butt facing forward or on the left with the butt facing backward.

You make it difficult for you to draw with your strongest hand.

So it’s a weak hand draw.

Oh, that’s so interesting.

I wonder if they make that for email, you know, so that I have to really think about checking my email again before I check it.

Yeah, yeah. What if the email program icon just moved to random places on the screen so you couldn’t compulsively click on it?

That’s brilliant. Yeah, we can’t email. That’s great. Do you have any more?

Yeah, I’ve got one last one. I get a lot of email from a fellow by the name of Joe Clark in Toronto who sends me new words all the time.

And this is one of his. And I didn’t know this, even though it’s widespread.

But do you know what the generic name for weed eaters and weed whackers is?

The generic name? I thought that was a generic name.

No, those are brand names.

Weed here and Weed Whacker are brand names for these, you know, the handheld battery or electric devices that do a little trimming along the side of the yard.

Yeah, I would have said trimmer.

They’re called string trimmers or line trimmers or strimmer, which is a mix of string.

Strimmers.

Strimmers, yeah.

Oh, I like that.

Now, it’s new to me because I haven’t had a lawn of my own to mow in 20 years.

And even then, my father gave us a push mower, manual grass clippers, none of this electric stuff, and a weed hook, you know, this big long blade on the end of a handle.

And two acres of grass.

That’s what he gave us.

We did not have a weed eater.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you today.

Just a little word quiz.

I thought I’d see how you’re doing.

I enjoyed it.

Well, send us your new words.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or you can call us 1-877-929-9673.