For the record, I have no plans to begin gardening in the nude.
I offer this by way of reassurance to my wife, my neighbors, the county zoning board and the FedEx deliverywoman who is still somewhat weirded out from the time I answered the doorbell wearing tattered sweat pants, a sports bra and a hockey helmet. It sounds a bit odd, I realize, but there’s a perfectly innocent explanation: I thought she was distributing religious tracts.
Nude gardening has weighed heavily on my mind of late, following a disturbing report in America’s Health magazine in which the very young and very nubile actress Alicia Silverstone revealed that she “loves gardening naked.”
“It probably started when I was doing my garden the first time,” she said. “I’d be out there, and it would be scorching hot, so I would take off all of my clothes and garden. … I’m not a nudist at all. I’m shy. … But in my own home, in my garden … OK.”
OK? No, Ms. Silverstone, this is not OK. Especially not for us pale, shy people. We here in Rowan County have a deep respect for our agricultural roots, and the notion of our farmers dropping their overalls ó and everything else ó while harvesting soybeans and corn is not something we wish to encourage. Gardening in the nude is not the natural order of things. “Butter beans” and “buck nekkid” do not belong in the same sentence, much less the same vegetable plot. If God had wanted people to garden in the nude, he wouldn’t have invented and chiggers.
This is a sensitive subject, I realize ó especially in the event of an early frost. However, as a sometime gardener and a full-time journalist, I have a responsibility to convey the truth as I see it. In this case, unfortunately, I couldn’t see it. Diligent searches of the Internet failed to unearth a single photograph of Alicia Silverstone gardening in the nude. (Warning to readers: Do not combine the words “carrot,” “nude” and “scorching hot” in a Google search. I may never eat slaw again.) For those interested in pursuing further research, Ms. Silverstone did pose nude in a PETA advertisement supporting vegetarianism. After intense scrutiny of the evidence, I concluded the woman does not have a green thumb, but ó agriculturally speaking ó she knows her way around a back 40.
As a live-and-let-live sort, I generally don’t concern myself with what people do in the privacy of their own cabbage patch. However, nude gardening raises several red flags ó beyond dermatological damage. If this catches on, it could have serious implications for next year’s “Top Tomato” contest and the Post’s “Garden Game,” which features oddly formed vegetables. If you think a rutabaga shaped like the Confederate Monument makes for an interesting photo, imagine that it’s being proudly displayed by a nude 250-pound truck farmer with a fondness for Krispy Kreme doughnuts and “Born to be Wild” body art. And knowing how one bad idea inevitably becomes the seed bed for another, nude gardening will no doubt lead to nude raking, nude resodding, nude mulching. Saturday mornings in suburbia would never be the same: “Quick, get the kids inside and draw the curtains. John’s cranking up the Lawn Boy again!”
Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps we should see what the gardening experts have to say. I expressed by concerns in an e-mail to our local extension agent, Darrell Blackwelder, and asked whether the N.C. Cooperative Service has taken an official stance on nude gardening.
Darrell’s response:
Well, I’m sure Darrell will get back to me after they run some test plots at the Agricultural Research Station.
Meanwhile, I’ve gotta run. The doorbell is ringing, and I’m not sure where I left my hockey helmet.
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Chris Verner is editorial page editor of the Salisbury Post.