There are those gardeners who like to commune barehanded with the soil and those who prefer to cover their hands when scrabbling in the earth. The later buy gloves and the former buy hand cream or maybe just a stiff scrubbing brush.
I like to wear gloves for many gardening activities and also if I have to pick up something nasty like a slug. I have a preferred brand of gloves that I have found suit me. They are made from a soft leather that is supposed to be machine washable - not that there is any way that I would put mud caked gloves into my washing machine. They can however, be rinsed and don't dry into a stiff unyielding claw.
There has been a problem though in that the garden centres only seemed to stock them in colours described as olive or grey, in effect this translates as colours designed to camouflage well when placed on soil.
Maybe the buyers feel that we gardeners would prefer these earthy colours which in other circumstances maybe I would.
Although I do like to wear gloves for many gardening tasks there are times when I need to work barehanded on fiddly jobs that need a more delicate touch. This means that when I am working gloves are regularly being taken off and placed (OK maybe thrown) on the ground. I then wander off and forget where I have left them causing me later to have to wander around retracing my steps in an attempt to locate the missing glove (it's often just one). Sometimes I accidentally bury a glove and don't find it again until it is dug back up.
Now I know that I could buy girlie gloves in fluorescent colours maybe even decorated with daisies but these either don't offer sufficient protection against the more vicious plants or they quickly become wet and soggy or they are rubbery and make for sweaty hands.
Recently when searching for replacements to my present gloves, (being buried didn't do one of the pair any favours), I spotted my favourite gloves in bright pink. Now isn't this easier to spot that the one above.
The only problem was that the pink gloves were not available in my size - small - so I ended up with a pair of medium ones which I will be able to manage with for most plot jobs.
Later I browsed the Internet to see whether there were any small size pink gloves online and I found that they also came in what was described as lavender.
Eventually after the carrier had lost one pair, a pair of small, what I would describe as blue, gloves were added to my gardening wardrobe for use in the garden. I'm hoping that my latest purchases don't fade to earth coloured after regular use.
It's not just gloves that I have problems with. There are other items that regularly play hide and seek with me when gardening. I'm always putting scissors down and recently hit on an idea to help locate them - red ribbon tied to one handle.
Now I wonder would reading glasses look really ridiculous if I tied a piece of red ribbon to them?
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