Naked Gardening Day? by Carol King

I don’t know about you, dear gardener, but I am still recovering from all the partying we have been doing this month. It started with April being both National Garden Month and National Lawn Care Month. My sister is a Floridian so of course I had to celebrate National Florida Tomato Month with her; as she insisted. And with my penchant for straw cowboy hats, I HAD to celebrate National Straw Hat Month. On top of all these, Earth Day was April 22 followed by Arbor Day on the 25th. I was considering resting for the next couple of weeks, that coupled with some of the hangover cures I have read about, I should be fine.
Then I discovered that May 2 is World Naked Gardening Day. Their promo reads “Get ready for the Fifth Annual World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD)! People across the globe are encouraged, on Saturday, May 2, 2009 to tend their portion of the world's garden clothed as nature intended.” Now I don’t know about you, but while I love partying as much as the next person, I may just pass this one up even though it is a World event not just a National event.
As I seriously considered participating in this day, I believe that it cannot be created by gardeners. Real gardeners know how dangerous our hobby is. We are like Indiana Joneses: adventurers who look death in the face every day.


Imagine celebrating World Naked Gardening Day with some of the scary things we encounter. Insects with proboscis, stingers, cutting jaws, fangs, mandibles, pinching claws, sucking and scissors-like mouth parts and have you looked closely at the pinchers on the earwig? Yikes. Think of the dangers of the plants themselves: plants with thorns, burrs, thistles, stickers, not to mention the limbs and twigs that stick out every which way ready to poke you. They don’t call it Crown of Thorns or Prickly Pear cactus for nothing.
What about the plants that causes all kinds of itchy rashes like poison ivy, and its cousins oak and sumac, ragweed and stinging nettle? And the sun, my goodness, the high altitude sun: the ultraviolet rays from the sun are more intense and therefore more damaging. Even when it is cloudy the risk of sunburn is extreme.
Then there are our tools: sharp, pinchie, pokie tools like pruners, rakes, knives, axes, weeders, hoes and loppers, dear gardener, think of loppers.
Don’t forget those pesky county, city, and state ordinances that say something gloomy about public indecency; always taking the fun out of everything.
Now granted it is kind of amusing to think of all your neighbors outside planting and mowing, watering and weeding. Imagine visiting the garden center for pansies and the clerk helps load your car with mulch and bags of compost; no no let’s don’t go there……… Nope. I’m hiding indoors all day May 2 after that thought!