Denver Home & Garden Show

by Felix Wong | 20 Feb 2011

When Lisa S. proposed that Leah, Tori and I meet up with her at the Denver Home & Garden Show, I thought, “Great, I can start getting ideas for my garden plot that is now enriched by manure.” Such as what vegetables to plant, and when.

As it turned out, there weren’t all that many edible leafy things on display. There were, however, a lot of vendors hawking “miracle” products befitting late-night one-hour infomercials. This included the following:

• A spray-on substance called Hydretain that “manages available soil moisture, extending watering intervals of indoor and outdoor plants, flowers, vegetables, shrubs, tress and grasses by as much as 2 to 3 times.”
• A “professional” pet grooming tool called “Fur Free” which Lisa and Tori claimed was a knock-off of “The Furminator.” (Don’t ask.) They bought one.
• Artificial grass that actually looked more convincing that the stuff used in put-put miniature golf.
• Lotion Lites lotion candles. Due to fire regulations, none of the sample lotion candles were lighted, but the vendor had one heated up which she rubbed on Leah’s and my hands, making us smell all girly.
• A “Steam Mop” that clean and sanitized strictly using steam. The demonstration was actually pretty impressive but the product seemed expensive ($120) for what was basically a glorified mop. The vendor didn’t have a website either so it’s impossible to research his product.

Then there were other items that seemed tenuously home or garden related, if at all. For example, this “Slimmer” machine:

Yours truly trying out the Slimmer machine.

For some reason, Leah, Lisa and Tori didn’t seem to appreciate the brilliance of this machine that “burns up to 200 calories per minute” (that’s 1200 calories per hour for merely standing on it). Right.

Anyhow, so I didn’t learn too much about herbaceous things nor did I come home with any miracle products. However, we did go out to sushi in downtown Denver afterward, meeting up with our friend Ida. Raw fish didn’t have much to do with gardening either but we had fun anyhow.