I've been thinking a lot lately. About the earth and life and all that goes with it. It's quite magnificent if you really pay attention to all that makes this world around us; from the sky to the countless uniform blades of grass pushing up through the land. Just think of the journey your coffee beans take to make it to your delicious smelling cup every morning. Hand picked coffee cherries, plucked from trees by the hands of a local on the other side of the world, dried in the sun and packed into burlap bags before they're shipped to a roaster. And in the summer a tiny little tomato seed will split open, releasing a tentative, thin thread of green that eventually becomes many leaves and stems heavy with full, ripe tomatoes. It's amazing. The entire world is amazing.
So I've been thinking about that but mainly I've been thinking about whether I'd rather go out in public with hideous hair and a nice outfit or a hideous outfit and nice hair.
It's not that I have to make the choice, I just wonder if I was forced to do one or the other which would it be?
Like, if I absolutely had to pick, would I rather go on a date wearing a beautifully cut Ralph Lauren silk dress and Chanel shoes with a head of hair that looks like it's housing an extended family of beavers? Or would I rather wear an outfit, that looks very much like a clown suit, but not enough like a clown suit to mistake me for an actual clown - with perfect, Vidal Sassoon hair?
I've been thinking about this for 48 solid hours and the closest I've come to a decision is Googling what a beaver dam looks like.
There's an argument to be made for the fact that if your hair looks good, you can wear any old thing and you'll still look fabulous but just how good does one's hair have to look to cancel out a massive polka dotted onesie with a ruffled collar?
In real life of course this wouldn't be an issue. A single beaver can weigh up to 70 lbs. My head could never support more than 2 or 3 of them. Plus I don't really own a clown suit but I do have a few things in my closet that look kind of funny on me. Every year or so I forget about how awful they are, try them on and then rip them off again. Yet for some reason instead of doing the logical thing - throwing them out or donating them - I carefully slip them back on the hanger and shove them into the closet where in one year's time I'll delight at finding something that I probably only imagined looked like it was sewn by a sloth wearing mittens.
It's very much like when I need something in the fridge and instead of throwing out the container of liquified cucumber slices I just shove it to the side to get to what I want. For weeks. Who hasn't let something get so bad in their refrigerator that they had to throw out the entire container because opening it to dump out the contents would be considered biological warfare? No one.
Would you like to save this stuff?
We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.
I say all of this because we're coming into the season where there will indeed be garden cucumbers in my refrigerator, my hair will almost certainly look like it's home to any number of animals, and the clothing I wear will look like I just escaped from prison by crawling through a airplane toilet.
It's gardening season.
All winter I go along looking half decent with my hair done, clean clothing, polished shoes or boots. I'd go so far as to say I look respectable. During gardening season? I look like something you'd wear a hazardous waste suit around. But I don't care.
I'm willing to walk around with nest head and dirt coloured clothing for months on end. It's a small price to pay for being able to sit outside for hours on end under the blue sky with a coffee in my hand - tending to those tomatoes.
Have a good weekend. Get dirty.
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renee ryz
I usually send leftovers home with my kids in large yogurt tubs I save, so they don't have to worry about returning a container. My son called a couple weeks ago (mid April) to ask me what I gave him in a container that was pink. I could not think of anything - he thought it maybe it was chili from Superbowl (February - ick) and sent me a pic. Just as I grabbed the phone frantically to call him and tell him THROW IT OUT - yep he tasted it, and promptly barfed. They were mashed potatoes from THANKSGIVING. So now anything is in a clear bag, or he won't take it home. Getting green just thinking about it again.
Got my beds ready this past weekend for planting!!!
Susan Hillman
I'm a Leo, thus hair-obsessed. YET, I would rather be out in public with a fantastic outfit and bad hair than vice versa. The reason: if you have good hair but bad clothing, you clearly don't know what you're doing. If you have a great outfit and bad hair, people might wonder if you actually do know what you're doing and you're on some kind of style edge with your hair. I think you can actually f*** with people that way. Not like I'm in a position to f*** with people vis à vis my hair, as I'm a middle-aged bourgeois person, but I'm just saying. One could.
Sharon
I am so happy to see someone else in dirty crummy gardening clothes! (Sorry) I just came in from planting tomatoes and columbine, and I'm a mess. I wear white shirts and pants I buy cheap at the thrift stores (heat reflective in the summer), and no amount of Tide or OxyClean will ever get them clean again. But I keep wearing them, holes and all. (And a few holes are in the front of my shirt, small and getting larger.) That's my spring, summer, and fall attire. In winter my clothes are just as bad, but warmer, since I'm doing indoor projects. But my hair looks good. Usually.
Karen
LOL. Well as long as your hair looks good no one will be looking at your boobs. ~ karen!
Grammy
I've gardened and "done stuff" my entire adult life. I figured out early on that it was way too much wasted time to try to get presentable for a trip to the hardware store or nursery or even grocery store if I was in the middle of gardening or tiling or painting. So I set my head to thinking my grubbiness must surely be a badge of honor, making others jealous of what an active woman I was. I'm not crazy, though. I know they just thought, "What a slob," but in my mind those were stares of admiration so I cavorted about picking up what I needed and getting back home to finish things without worrying about it.
I always wore my gardening hat when I went on those trips, so that was a sure sign to anyone that it DID NOT matter what my hair looked like underneath because I was too busy to bother.
Now that I'm actually an old lady, I find I can look somewhat disheveled whenever I feel like it without having the obvious dirt under the fingernails or paint spatters on me. People seem to give quite a bit of leeway to those of us they think probably can't help it. If you draw the line at dirty and smelly (no one wants to be that or be near it) you can get away with pretty much anything if you're so wrinkled people would say, "There's so much character in that face -- and look at those hands..." if they saw a portrait of you.
Sara
Amen, I LIVE for growing season, my yard looks fabulous and gives me delicious things and makes me happy, I look like crap and I also don’t care.
I think I’d have to go with killer outfit, my husband swears I’m the only one who can tell whether I’m having a good hair day or not (curly hair is both a blessing and a curse)
Lez
Haha! I honestly thought upon reading your title, then you writing about bad hair days, that you were going to give us some scary homemade remedy using liquefied Cucumbers to tame frizz or condition dry hair or something!
LOL! :)
Karen
I'll give it a shot next time I come across a rotten cucumber and let you know the results. Maybe. ~ karen!
Ev Wilcox
My mom was from the depression era, and they were poor. At home, you NEVER just opened the fridge and shopped for a tasty leftover. There were living creatures in there-Stephen King would have been proud! She could not throw anything away. There were deli type containers packed in there, never labeled as to what and when. We would come home from school and there was a mountain of said containers on the table and a not-in-a-very-good-mood mother dealing with them as she cleaned out the fridge. I love her so, and miss her. I am 95% fastidious in the management of left-overs in my fridge-a result of the creatures I grew up with I guess. I have seen living "things" in my daughter's fridge-it must skip a generation, huh? She is a single, working mother and her girls are in various sports, etc., so I don't blame her. One just needs to be wary of going in their box, that's all. Those creatures may even be friendly, but I will not be finding out !
And, your gardening "look" is just fine Karen!
Caye Aiello
Karen, from the bottom of my heart - I love reading your posts. You are a national (multi-national?) treasure for gardeners!
Joel
I love and dread gardening season. Excited to do the work and see the wonderful produce we will harvest... dread that something will go wrong and plants will die. I worked on a farm when I was a teenager and the farmer was always worried about something (frost, no rain, too much rain, pests, weeds, ...).
How do you cope with the stress of gardening?
Kristin Ferguson
Sometimes, when I'm working on dirty work, I wish I could just not have hair for the duration. My hair is long, and it gets tangled no matter what I do. Last night's marathon of tiling a shower alcove is a case in point.
SusanR
Setting aside entirely the point you were making, if in your life you purchase one, good human hair wig in a suitable style, and take care of it over the years, you'll never have to make the decision of hair or clothing. You'll be able to have the Chanel Shoes and Ralph Lauren silk dress, no matter what your hair actually looks like. So long as you haven't cemented it into actual cement spikes on your head, you'll be able to just slip on that wig and be ready to dance the night away or pop off to the grocery, whatever.
I cannot recommend too highly the stress-free hair life that a good wig provides.
Marion
I love that one of the sidebar ads on this post wants me to buy clown costumes from Amazon! Bahahahaha.
Marion
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Benjamin
Karen, Just a friendly reminder that Saturday is International Garden Naked Day!! I hope you'll snap a few pics to share with your readers. With a well placed garland of glitter and bedazzle of course. Those melon seeds aren't going to plant themselves... Have a great day !!
Melissa
Everyone in my family find clowns terrifying so I would always go with good hair if forced to make a choice. I don't know about you but as I get older I give a lot less fucks about how I look and more on how I spend my time. Bring on gardening season!!!
Leisa Joan
I always tell people my house doesn't get properly cleaned once I start gardening again...I don't have the time, and I'd rather be out in the garden.
oh, & I used to have a pair of old crappy green sweat pants that I gardened in, nicknamed "mean greens" and patched & fixed them until the elastic was no longer usable...and that's when my dog would get loose in the neighborhood & I had to track her down in those mean greens & my wellies...those were the days.
Jacquie Gariano
We compost a lot. But sometimes there is something in the refer that I don't know what it is and don't want to know. Garbage, sorry. I'd like to look that good gardening.
Jeanne
Gardening allows me to play in the dirt all day without looking like a weirdo. Though my husband does find it amusing and I often wonder how some people can work in their garden and not get dirty. I go to water the plants and come back looking like Pigpen.
* btw, I'd go for the nice clothes and the beaver family...
Sherri
Oh yeah, love the feel of good garden soil, pulling up a rascally weed roots intact. I’ve ruined many pairs of shoes while running out for a quick peak. Cheers to the next few months of dirty fun
Cathy Mamer
Hope my Gravatar takes....
Cathy Mamer
Yea!