The Porpoise of Life

swims through the "C"s of grading.

I might get a "C" in gardening; but one thing I've learnt is that if I moisturize my hands, and especially my thumbs and my fingertips, with hand cream before I do any weeding, then the soil does not turn my thumbs and fingertips brown and dry. It is basically the opposite of dyeing one's hair: when one dyes one's hair, one begins by damaging the hair, so that the dye is absorbed into the hair. I don't like wearing gloves to weed because if I do then I can't feel where the stems are. I use tools for big jobs, but getting rid of the small, common weeds allows a wider range of flowers to completely cover the flower-beds (giving me more flowers more of the time and thereby helping to reduce flooding in wet weather, while helping the soil to retain its moisture in dry weather). It also means that I see more of the garden. The problem had been the staining of my thumbs and fingertips, which had proved impossible to remove with soap once it was there; but a girlfriend had told me how hair dyes worked years ago, and I put one and one together.