To wile away pauses in life I’ve been asking people what they wear when they garden.
“Starkers,” one gentleman answered and due to his delightful accent I thought he said, “stalkers”. Well now, some intriguing European costume for pottering among plants was about to be revealed to me and Sherlock Holmes loped deerily across my mind. However the bare essentials negated this notion when the man’s wife said , “Oh, for pete’s sake you only ever did that once. And now he avoids the neighbours because he’s afraid the night wasn’t as dark as he thought.”
For my part, shyness and persistence had a bit of a tussle but curiosity won out and I journalistically asked, “So, why did you garden, um, like that.”
“Muddy,” he replied.
“Now she’s going to think I complain about having to wash your clothing,” his wife said with a laugh but I felt, not for the first time when in interview mode, that I was an unwilling battledore of unwitting shuttlecocks. (And greatly affected by an accent!)
“If more people gardened in the nude we’d see the humour in it and the world would be a better place,” he said. I was intrigued by his philosophy. His wife looked quite astonished. Maybe this was the most words she’d ever heard him string together at one time and she would need time to think of what he had actually said.
Garden tours will have an added flavour if my lively imagination happens to remember his words, dances pictures with them, and the chuckles in my heart will indeed brighten the world.
In the pursuit of defining gardening gear, and thinking it a less hazardous method than word of mouth, I took the chance of trying on a pair of gardening shoes when they conveniently presented themselves. They were the moulded plastic kind in bright colours that must have the daffs and the poppies in an anxious preen. They were minding their own business outside a door at which I had knocked several times on a “should’ errand and gotten no response.
No one home – yippee, thinks I, and as I was about to turn and walk away the question presented, “Why not?” and I couldn’t think of any convincing reason to not. In a jiffy I was out of my boots and into the clogs. They sure looked nice. They felt – well, strains of Clementine with her fishy foot apparel appeared from somewhere in my head and I took a couple of steps to the tune. If I had been in an actual garden I would have been trip-toeing through the tulips. On that veranda it was more a jerk and stumble and “please Mother Nature I will never, ever, palm a cutting in a public garden again if you just let me NOT fall off this porch into that viburnum and let me immediately think of something somewhat-face-saving to say to the lady who has just opened her front door to find a total stranger wearing her gardening shoes.”
They say embarassment is good for the soul. Whoever said it must have a higher tolerance for blushing. I’ve since thought of four or five things I could have said but didn’t.
A wealth * of women were looking at gardening aprons in the clothing section of a local nursery and with a “can I believe my luck!” thought, I sidled right in. Here’s what I harvested.
Pockets – the roomier the better, but not vertical ones that can cause organ bruising from tools – must be horizontal ones!
Hats that shade the neck and face and gloves that protect the hands. Sunburn and cancer be damned – age spots were the issue here.
Anything with a waist when standing cinches the hips when kneeling so, in the interest of burn-the-corset, garments without waists were recommended.
One woman said she swore by pantyhose and we all pricked up our ears and eyebrows at this. I was beginning to feel downright chummy with this group and had to quell a query: the familiarity was, after all, all on my part.
“I wrap a pair around my forehead like a headband – great for sweat and if you let a leg dangle you have something to wipe your neck and hands with.”
Creativity – thy name is a gardening woman!
*wealth of – any gathering where knowledge gained by experience is exchanged
Karen needs a garden to keep her out of further mischief in Victoria. BC.
Comments