Do you garden 'unplugged'?

With my cell phone in my pocket, I can call when someone #1. locks me outside #2. to ask for a cold drink (sometimes the person who brings the cold drink forgets & locks the door when going back inside)
Also, no more interruptions by my family yelling out the back door to announce that I have an important phone call. I actually seldom get phone calls, so it's not a big deal.

I listen to music at my desk job all day. When I'm in my garden, I'm listening to the sounds of nature.

Greenbrain, I like your answer :)

GymGirl, that device sounds like exactly what I need - my neighbor has a loveable lab pup, but being a water dog, she is having a hard time staying out of my fish pond. She has totally trashed it, pots are all askew, ledging rocks are scattered about, and everything is murky. My fish will survive as will the plants, but I need to train her to leave it alone. I don't want to complain to the neighbor, as my dog and the pup regularly traipse back and forth between our properties (we are both on acreage). This sounds like just the ticket! I'll just have to think of a one-word command to associate with it, perhaps 'out', which won't interfere with whatever training they are doing with her.

I use my cell phone for its camera and take pictures of all the new blooms and how the gardens change throughout the weeks. I do not really talk on it or like being on it when I am out in the garden.

Bonehead,
LMK how it goes with the puppy!

Ok, true confession, if I think Mom will need me -she is in her nineties, I will take the thing. thing takes such bad pictures I stopped using it for that -I borrow Hubby's camera instead.

Mom has a special ringtone. Everyone else can wait.

I don't want anything sonic that a backyard does not give me anyhow. It is amazing how most of the sounds of the city wash out into the white noise of traffic, birds, muffled tv and radio, heat or a/c.
but
The boy two houses away practices basketball - darnit I wish he would take up chess- or bicycling! There is something really annoying about the flat sound of a basketball hitting the back-board. He does this during the evening when it is prime time for gardening-not too hot!

The man next door has discovered there is an electrical outlet in his garage and he likes to listen to the baseball game if he had to do yard work. I will soon have to get some sort of sound system for the garden in self defense!LOL
Heather

I ONLY take my iPhone into the garden to check my Clyde's Garden App or some other such thing... or take pictures to share with garden friends. Sure don't want to have it around to disturb my sanctuary, so usually it's far out of reach.

Okay, here's my stand, and I beg you all to carry it with you, even if you turn it off. In 2010, before hubby was even out of bed, I was walking the garden with coffee. Stepped wrong, thought S**T, I'm going to break my leg, so threw all my weight onto the other side of my body....broke my leg in two places but not the one I thought I'd break!! I would have had to crawl back to the house for help, cause no one inside could have heard me even if I'd yelled at the top of my lungs. BUT, I didn't break my coffee cup! ^_^

I go in the garden to get away from technology, unless expecting an important call I cannot miss that I have to wait around for, I leave the cell phone in the house. I bring my camera outside in the morning and leave it on the porch untill I need it to take pics.

Unplugged. I'm not one of the lamers that need to be "connected" every second of the day. I HATE that.
Seeing people constantly glued to their "smart" phones really saddens me. Just pathetic.

The only place I don't take my cell phone is into the shower. My son lives 700 miles away and I sure don't want to miss a call when he decides to make one. LOL

I do carry my cell phone with me most of the time. My son lives 2400 miles away and I sure don't want to miss his call.

Please, once again I'm begging you, carry your phone with you. Last Tuesday, the 11th, my husband called me on his cell phone from the next room. All he could get out was "Come". He had been having some trouble breathing and had gone to the Dr. on Monday. The doc thought it was alergies and sent him home with a puffer and singular. When I rushed to my husband he couldn't breathe at all. His face was deathly pale. I called 911 and they took him to the ER. Turns out he was having a "saddle pulmonary embolism". Gave him clot buster and he is here today. Most people who have this, it is sudden death. If I hadn't had my phone, he would have died in the next room. How would I have lived with that????? So please...please...think of your phone as a life line, cause it IS!

(P.S. Spent 6 days in the hospital, 3 in ICU. Scary, scary!)

Joyce, so glad that your DH is all right!

Thank you. Had 4 more hours at the ER on Tuesday, but turns out it is part of the clot that is in his lung that hasn't dissolved yet. Nothing to do for it but accept the pain. He said as long as he knows he's going to live, he can handle it!

I'm one of those "lamers" who carries my phone for exactly the kind of reason Joycet just posted above....

As a single, middle-aged female, there are any number of ERs that could happen to me as I garden alone.

So glad my mom raised a smart "lamer...."

I'm glad you do, too. It has certainly made a believer out of me!!!!

That was scary, Joyce. Maybe I should rethink not taking my phone out. When I was young I had to have music everywhere I went. Not anymore. I love the sound of birds and crickets. So peaceful.

You can always put your phone on vibrate, but at least have it with you. Mine is with me 24/7/365.

I have a question for all those who keep the phone with them at all times. Where on your person do you keep that phone?

It's a serious question with which I wrestle often, and with so many pro-phone folks here in one placed, this seems like the perfect place for me to learn the ins and outs of keeping the phone on hand. Having been born well before the cell phone age, my body did not come equipped with a cell phone holder. Whenever I leave home, I take the phone along in my purse, in case of accident or breakdown, but around the house and in the garden, I don't keep my purse in hand, thus no place for the phone. A pocket would be nice, but ladies' attire is often designed more for appearance than function, and thus either has no pockets or worse, pretend pockets, or shallow, poorly placed, dysfunctional pockets. I have pants with no pockets, pants with shallow pockets from which my phone may fall, and pants that are a size too big now that I've lost some weight - the phone tends to pull the latter down on one side approximating that hip-hop, low rider, undie's exposed, pants down around the thighs look for male's that has been a visual blight on society for years now. (Sorry, I've never found that look attractive, not even on hot guys, and I definitely don't want to model it in my garden.)

I have the cell phone in my right-hand back pocket and the portable phone in the left hand back pocket. I have an iPhone 4S.

You should not carry any cell phone next to your body, nor talk on it next to your head (many people use plug-in mic cords and lay the phone a little away from their body). Experts say that a cell phone can cause tumors. Please keep it away from your body if you use one. I have cordless phones that I could take outside, but even they have some risk. Much research has been done on this subject, but not much of it gets out to the public, probably because it's 'bad for business.'

I have my phone in a belt holster.

jeri,

From your description, I'm guessing you most likely wear jeans, right? Jeans along with those khaki pants are both patterned after men's pants and thus usually have decent, functional pockets. Women who wear these styles have ample pocket space for a phone - except for those who have to lie down to zip their jeans, that is. Sadly, I've not found any jeans that comfortably accommodate my current shape and still provide the freedom I need for gardening. My comfy gardening pants only have front pockets (or none at all).

Even if I wore jeans, I would never manage to carry my portable (land line) phone in a back pocket. (*laughing, private joke*) In emergency (have to get that call) situations, I've carried the portable phone in my front pocket a time or two and was lucky not to dial up China by mistake. To my knowledge my portable doesn't have a mechanism for locking the buttons against pocket dialing accidents. Glad that works for you though. That is way more phones than I need to carry, although I would like to find a place to carry my 1, small, cell phone comfortably and safely - so I don't end up sitting on it by mistake, loosing it, etc.

Thank you very much for responding to my request, jeri!

Thanks, frogymom,

Is that something one can purchase? That sounds like something that might work for me. Headed to Amazon to look. Thanks.

Solace,

Thanks for the warning. I've heard and read about those issues. It has been on the news, etc. Holding the phone up to one's ear is more of an issue for those who tend to have a phone all but surgically implanted on their face, by that I mean people who are on the cell phone a lot. As rarely as I use the thing, I don't think it is a problem. As to carrying the cell phone on one's person, I'll have to think on that a bit. I have heard the issue raised a time or two, but if it were truly a problem one would expect, with all of the millions of people carrying them around 24/7, to see a spike in cancer of organs near the hip pockets, and that doesn't seem to be the case. Not saying you are wrong, just saying I'm thinking it over.

Once, again, the information regarding dangers of cell phone use is like many other carcinogenic substances in life, if it causes people not to buy the product, the info is 'bad for business' and likely suppressed.

Here's some more info:
"...there’s a reason why the FCC finally issued cell phone “precautions” despite the industry’s assurances to the contrary.

For starters, the 2009 special EMF issue of the Journal of Pathophysiology contains over a dozen different studies on the health effects of electromagnetic fields and wireless technology

In addition, a review of 11 long-term epidemiologic studies published in the journal Surgical Neurology revealed that using a cell phone for 10 or more years approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same side of the head where the cell phone is typically held.

You should also know that:

A study by Dr. Siegal Sadetzki linked cell phone use to salivary gland tumors
Wearing a cell phone on your hip -- either on your belt or in a pocket -- has been linked to decreased bone density in the pelvic region. (All the other vital organs located in your pelvic region -- your liver, kidney, bladder, colon and reproductive organs -- are also susceptible to radiation damage).
Proximity to cell phone towers causes an increase in the symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, including fatigue, sleep disturbances, visual and auditory disturbances, and cardiovascular effects
The BioInitiative Report includes studies showing evidence for:
Effects on Gene and Protein Expression (Transcriptomic and Proteomic Research)
Genotoxic Effects – RFR and ELF DNA Damage
Stress Response (Stress Proteins)
Effects on Immune Function
Effects on Neurology and Behavior
Brain Tumors, Acoustic Neuromas, and childhood cancers like leukemia"

Source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/27/fcc-now-recommends-precautions-for-cell-phone-use.aspx

Just to clarify, I was talking about people that can't put down the phone for 2 minutes, carrying one is smart of coarse.

It's one reason I'm not on Facebook, I don't need to be texted at every minute or two.

Solace, I'm careful about using cellphones and wifi for all of those reasons, but I'm also a bit suspicious of Mercola's site, largely because he has products to sell but also because he tends toward hyperbole. Nonetheless, we have no idea what longterm exposure to those sorts of EMF devices will do to us, just as with GMOs...

I'm waiting to get the new eyePhone®* implanted.

*® should actually be © 20th [or 30th?] Century Fox

Next stop : ""The Borg "" from Star Trek....

Will you be assimilated?....Borg-not in the garden, thanks. See you at the movies!

Uh, "resistance is futile?"

I sure miss Jeri Ryan!

I'm actually One of four!

"Borg? Sounds Swedish." ;-)

I, too, miss the Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One (i.e. Jeri)!

A true Trekkie!

I often end up in the garden completely unprepared. By days end, though, chances are good I've brought the phone down.

LOL , it was only a thought . as long as they would still let us garden ,otherwise , I guess I would have to argue "futile"
hmmm Seems I have done that a few times before .. lol

If I don't have a working pocket when I'm gardening, I just put it on the loudest ring and lay it somewhere near me. This has worked well for me. Like I said, it will never be far from me again because of health issues that I didn't know my DH had and my broken leg. If my story has helped just one person be more prepared for that emergency, then I'm happy.

The actor William Holden fell on the bedstead, in a drunken stupor, and put a gash in his forehead. He laid there and bled to death. The coroner determined it had been 4-5 days before he was found. He was 63 years old.

Somehow, even if I'm that isolated from people, I would hope that someone would call me so I could ask for help...