July 14, 2017 – I ripped the ass out of . . .

        . . . a pair of garden pants this morning.  I must say, I do get lots of mileage [or my money’s worth] out of my casual clothes.  The cotton, navy blue long pants in question were purchased at the OLD Wal Mart and that was years ago.

        Of course, being 100% cotton they shrunk one whole size and I could barely squeeze into them after the first wash.  Then, I lost weight and wore the daylights out of them.  Getting faded and worn by the 4^th or 5^th summer, I bought the same brand, but a size larger and those pants never shrunk and were always my “Helen-Balloon-DAH” pants. [I wonder where I got that phrase?  I remember it as a teenager so it must be a family saying.  I do have an Aunt Helen and all the St. John clan is ‘large’. - I wonder? Sorry I digress.]

        I don’t remember exactly what I was doing in these casual pants, but they were still in the “can-wear-out-in-public” category.  I got the inside right pant leg, about six inches north of the hem, caught on something and ended up with a three corner tear.  The first three corner tear I’d experienced in my lifetime and it was at that point these pants got shifted into the role of garden pants and quickly became my “gardening uniform.”

        Prior to them I would wear old shorts out in the garden and got plenty of bug bites, poison ivy, scratches, and scrapes on my legs.  Once I shifted into long pants – so easily identified by the three corner tear – which for some foolish reason I have an affinity for that ‘tear’ - I discovered I no longer needed the kneeling pad for under my knees.  I could walk on my knees from one 3-foot weeding section to another.  It made weeding easier, simpler, and quicker.  I just stayed down and I didn’t have to get up and get down moving the kneeling pad.

        Funny thing that . . . when my husband sees me get up from weeding to move, his assumption is ‘Good, she’s done.  I can carry out a few cold beers for us and we can sit and just gaze at our nice gardens. . .’  He constantly interrupted me when I wore shorts and was doing the up and down bit.

        Now he knows when I get up it is to empty the rolling wheel barrow filled with weeds that I pull along behind me.  It means I am taking it to the compost pile which is a more natural break in my garden weeding session and a more welcome break.

        Yes, those long garden pants have seen up-close-and-personal many new gardens, spring plantings, fall clean up, and my famous mudding sessions. [We’ll discuss mudding session in a future blog.  Those sessions end up with me literally peeling off mud caked pants at the back door mud room, aptly named for the washer and dryer, and my streaking through the house to the shower and fresh clothes.]

        But, alas, in this wicked heat and humidity, these gardening pants literally stuck to me; the fabric did not shift but was ‘glued to me’ and I took one too many deep knee bends and I blew out the fabric in the butt. HUGE TEAR! It was not the actual rear end seam, but the left buttock.  Is it a coincidence that it, too, is a three corner tear which is big enough that I could feel the breeze?

        I guess scooting around often on my butt weeding wore the fabric paper thin, and as my husband has often called my butt - “The ass on my Lass” - in the end, did them in.