the gloves

earlier this week dawn bought me a pair of gloves when i work outside on the lawn or cutting stuff around the lawn. they are 70 percent leather and 30 percent cotton, gray gloves.

when she first gave them to me, i smeled them. i'm a very olfactory type of person. i smell almost anything to get a sense of something. that's what a lot of my memories are olfactory ones.it's something that irriates dawn because i pull things up to my face and take a good whiff of them.

so these gloves went through the same test. it brought back a lot of memories from working out at the ranch. in fact, i had similar gloves, perhaps the last time i worked at the ranch before i got married. they are not extremely thick, leather gloves, so it makes it easier to grasp things such as shovels, axes, picks, post-hole diggers, fence posts or hay bales (the square kind where you grab the wires around the bales). it makes it so much easier to grab shrub or brush branches after you've cut them. and in texas, that's essential because nearly everything, every brush or shrub, has thorns on it and you will tear up your hands with them if you dont' have gloves on. (it has happened before on occasion when i forgot the gloves.)

so as i pulled the gloves up close and took a deep breath, all of those ranch memories came flooding back. now, i'll admit i'm not exactly the rancher proto-type. but i put in my fair share of building barb-wire fences, clearing away brush to build those fences, lift hay bales off a a field in the middle of july or august, or use them to fix windmills, so as not to burn the hands when pulling a pulley to get pipes from out of the water well underneath the windmill. good times.

and now i do not live in a rural area where any of that is possible. i have moved on from that. however, nowi am now using the gloves for something else...strangling hapless individuals as they pass by our home at night.

actually, i am using them while working on the yard. i have found it quite relaxing. perhaps it's comfortable and a place where i can retreat to to get away from worldly crap, work and worries. that is why i think i enjoy working with my chili (or is it chile??) peppers out back. it's nothing major, but i have three large plants out back that i care for on a daily basis. to one side is a big tomato plant in a large pot. it's got lots of budding tomatoes. my pepper plants have already yielded me quite a bit of peppers, too. i'm waiting for more.

today, i was out in the front yard pulling grass away from the ararngemetn of flowers we have along our walkway that comes up to our porch steps. i took out my books on tape machine and set to pulling rass away from the pretty red and white flowers. it felt so good, so free. it is a nice way to spent a few hours.

i wish we had our own place with a larger backyard where we could plant more flowers and plants and work out all saturday afternoon. that would be relaxing.