Neighbors

It's a good thing that I have gotten to know my neighbors. For one, it means that we can have loud parties and they don't care, mostly because they are over partying with us. But it also means that I don't run the risk of having them call the nice men in white coats to come pick me up.

When the urge to garden strikes me, I oblidge. This means that the porch light that my dad installed last time my parents visited is especially useful. Before, if I wanted to garden at night I had to garden by flashlight! Sometimes if I am trying to deadhead plants I still need a flashlight.

I am also not one to care much about fashion. On any given day what I wear to work is generally clean, color coordinated and pressed, the latest style however, it generally isn't. This care generally goes out the window on the weekends. I want to be comfortable and I don't want to have to worry about ruining good clothes. I don't know how Martha Stewart does it. If I tried to garden wearing freshly pressed kahkis, a white blouse and calf skin loafers, with my hair freshly groomed and styled, I would promptly step back to look at my garden, stick a foot in the muddy weed bucket, fall on my rear and manage to land in the one mud puddle in the yard, created by the hose that didn't quite get turned off all the way. For this reason I wear old clothes in the garden. And since these clothes are well, old, they often are a mishmash of t-shirts from various events and lounge pants that are getting faded, splattered with paint or worn (which are great by the way because since they are light weight I can wear them in the summer to keep bugs off without sweating copious amounts). With this assortment of clothing, my hair is pulled up any way I can keep it off my neck (though I just got a jaunty gardening hat which will be making its debut soon and will alieviate the problem of keeping hair out of my eyes and sun off my face and neck) an the outfit is topped off, or rather bottomed off, by my bright green garden clogs. The shoes are the only things that are color coordinated, and they are color coordinated with the garden, not with my outfit! (Is the picture of why the neighbors might think I'm a little coukoo coming into focus?)

As a side note- I like feeling the grass between my toes, but when it is muddy or I don't feel like washing my feet every time I come indoors, garden clogs are great. And if they get muddy I just hose them off and leave them in the slop sink to dry. I recomend everyone get a pair. Make sure they are the craziest color you can find, it just goes to add to the color un-coordination of the gardening outfits!

As I mentioned in my CO2 post. I occasionally talk to my plants. This doesn't stop when they grow out of seedlinghood. I am constantly asking weeds why they chose to grow where they did. Or, if a plant intends to flower any time soon. Sometimes I have to go as far as to threaten a trip to the compost pile if something isn't growing as well as I think it should. All the while humming or whistling a happy tune. The plants don't talk back, but I'm sure the neighbors have wondered who I was talking to. (see why the neighbors might be calling the loony bin yet?)

And lastly, my most recent escapades- gardening in the rain. I would have had to water the dirt down first before I thinned out the lettuce anyway, I just liked having it done for me. And I had stuff to do later in the day, so I couldn't wait for the rain to pass over, if it was even going to let up before it got dark. So I took my umbrella out, balanced it perciously over one shoulder and on the lip of a pot and transplanted lettuce. I had to put my umbrella down at one point so I decided to put on my rain jacket. Dark green of course to color coordinate with my orange Halloween lounge pants, and my green shoes!
So the neighbors say that they wear just as uncoordinated of outfits on weekends as I do, but I'm still keeping an eye out for a van full of nice gentlemen wearing white coats and offering to "take me away for awhile."