Hi, everybody and welcome to the Joe Gardner Show. This is Joe Lampel, the Joe behind Joe Gardner.

Today is definitely a first, and thanks to our guest today, it was way overdue. This conversation

is one you need to hear. It's about eye care in the all too common occurrence of eye injuries,

sometimes quite severe, in fact, that occur

while in the process of gardening, or doing miscellaneous yard work, or trimming anywhere around

your landscape.

Today, we are so fortunate to be speaking with a fellow podcast listener, Dr. Kirsten Pollard,

a highly specialized ophthalmologist and gardener, too. Thank goodness. She reached out to me

through an email after listening back in the podcast archives to an episode I had done years ago on

garden safety. In that show, I mentioned that I had recently poked my eye with a wood stem while

doing some pruning. In fact, that may have been what

prompted that episode. Fortunately, it didn't have long-term consequences, but after my conversation

with Dr. Pollard, I was lucky and I now realize how much I've been taking for granted when it

comes to protecting my eyes is much, if not more than I protect my hands with gloves or UV clothing

for sun exposure. So today you are in for an eye-opening conversation that you will be very

glad to have listened to. And I am so thankful Kirsten reached out to volunteer her expertise

so that we are more in the know about taking care of an often overlooked part of our

gardening routine. So let's get started and as we do, thanks to our sponsor for today's

episode, Milorganite. Whenever I'm adding supplemental fertilizer here at the garden farm, I use

malorganite. For nearly a hundred years, they've been making the same non-burning, slow-release, organically

derived source of nitrogen fertilizer

that produces great results

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