Monday, September 14, 2020

Oddest Garden Tool: Clothes to Better Gardening

 Working professional propagation for many years, we all wore aprons.  Couldn't work without one.  More than clothing, the apron is a tool.

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Of course I wear an apron working in my garden at home.  They teach that in college?  Pure, OJT. 

 

 Women Vintage Japanese Style Cotton Aprons Dress with Pocket  

Pic, above/below, here.

 Need an apron/dress, below.  Most often gardening, I plop on ground, and butt scoot.

 Sleeveless Straps Back Cross Apron Dress 

 Incredible, below.  Master of color combination, interesting.  Fall gardening, yet can head out to jobsite, stop at grocery store, back into garden.

    

Pic, above, here.

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"Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, & times shall be good.  We are the times: such as we are, such are the times."  St. Augustine, AD 354 - 430, Sermons to the people, 80:8.   Her clothes, above, delightful, I'm on the hunt.  Knowing they came from the, Poverty Cycle.  

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Gardening has a sliver, if we remain fortunate, of every sacred Poverty Cycle education. 

A little bit cooler in fall, below, tweed.  All my best tweed is from thrift stores.  Am 'over' rubber boots, they crack, wear a couple years cracked & duct taped.  No more, done.  Cowboy boots, leather/with rigid rubber soles. Justin, Tractor Supply.  

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Use my dad's inherited Stetson, no more broad brim hats, below.  Stetson gives shade AND broader range of view.  Plants are my doggies.  No one can say, She's all hat and no cattle.  For good measure, I wear dad's original Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses he bought in late 50's when he was an Air Force Test Pilot.  

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Think my Garden knows when I walk outside?

 

 GLAMOUR UK Victoria Lee in Tweed Comes Out to Play by Chris Craymer. Charlotte-Anne Fidler, November 2012, www.imageamplified.com, Image Amplified (3)  

Pic, above//below, here.

 Kangaroo paw (Angiozanthos spp.) is an Australian native that made the leap to the dry Mediterranean climate of U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 10 through 11. Its clusters of pawlike tubular, fuzzy yellow, pink or red blooms attract hummingbirds from late spring through fall. While a waving bank ...

 Soon, these, below, are the gardening clothes for a month.  Scarf, exactly what's needed when under large shade trees, ticks, or going into shed for tools, spiders.

   

Pic, above, here

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"The habits of the home in one generation become the morals of society in the next." 

My parents grew up suburban/agrarian.  They raised a family, suburban/subdivision, no agrarian.  Their gardening was maintaining the lawn with mowing, chemicals, fertilizers,  & shrubs the same.  No different than most of their era.  The era decimating bird populations, insect populations, poisoning soil, water supply and killing microbiomes.

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Quote, above, seems extreme at first reading.  Across the decades of my own life, not my parents, it is an honest quote.  Rachel Carson wrote, Silent Spring, two years after I was born.  We're using more chemicals, not less.  Carson's advice to stop using chemicals in the landscape fell on my heart as obvious, growing up.   

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Merely figuring out the need for proper gardening clothes, was through experience gained on my own.  

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Aside from inherited pieces mentioned, over 90% of my gardening clothes are thrift store.  Better quality than new retail.  No worries about rips, stains, holes at thrift store pricing.

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What's in all my pockets?  Cell phone, Felco pruners, brown twine, misc.

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"...things that they value, or their traditions, or their aesthetic ideals, or their ways of constructing happiness, or the things that they recognize as being important and worth noting."  Tim Lomas

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At the front end of getting a Horticulture degree, studying historic gardens across Europe for decades, and supporting myself designing gardens it's amazing to realize, now, more of the terrain, not merely the map of my life, "I'm going out as a scout, hunting for resources and ideas that might be liberating or sustaining now, and in the future."  Olivia Laing.

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Reparative gardening, not the expected habit of gardening my parents exposed me to.  Garden Morals held.

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Hope your soul hears what Reparative Gardening offers.  Love, food, health, delight in learning, spirit, Nature, a voice wiser than your own.  For starters.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO T

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Not a sponsored post, and do like the Justin cowboy boots.  Hose off just as easily as rubber, my feet don't get wet, boots don't crack.

3 comments:

  1. Voraciously reading your blog, first post to current point (October 2009), with tangential, deep forays into specific topics. Taking notes as they apply to my garden and to the desperately dumpy yard at my parents' house.
    Lovely to see your latest post on garden wear since I seek "the perfect" garden gear:) For me, linen utility pants work with my propensity to sweat buckets, but mine lack pockets, sadly.
    Planning to make garden apron from old pair of jeans (many online tutorials, not my invention).
    Still seeking perfect shirt, maybe chambray?
    Your closing to every post "Garden and Be Well" resonates. Thank you!
    Gene @ back in thirty

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  2. Your foot doesn't roll as easily when stepping in an unseen hole when you wear boots, my husband reminds me. I think you must be a treat for sore eyes when spied in your gardening wardrobe, Tara. I wonder why any clothes designer even makes dresses, skirts, or pants without pockets? Useless.

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