The Naked Garden

There was an original garden once where Adam met Eve and they hit it off big time. From my limited Bible knowledge, neither of them was properly clothed at the time, nor did they realize in their joyous celebration that they were sinners. Until they ate that bad apple and then all hell broke loose and the two naked lovers grabbed some fig leaves and covered themselves.

My garden is shedding all of its summer robes and vestments and revealing its bare naked bones and this is the time that I start re-imagining its structure. The slope at the back is revealed again. The paths are clearly delineated. I can see the places where I made errors and the places where it all came together. I've got a grand plan (that would need heavy investing) to fence out a corner and create a better vegetable garden with a wall so high that any deer trying to leap in would smash his sweet Bambi face and go elsewhere.

Nakedness is on my mind for other reasons too. I'm thinking of the  Puritanical brethren and Bible-thumping conservatives out there beyond my secular bubble. I'm talking about those wing nuts that I keep encountering on my Facebook page. (Recently, I was unfriended for being too liberal and another effectively called me a communist. Sheesh! Here's a song for you, my sweeties.)

So I'm wondering if the sign posted recently in our gym locker room has anything to do with this bitter zeal and hostility that seems to be trending in our great divided nation. The sign declared new locker room etiquette rules.

And incredibly, item "number 4" chastized all of us for being naked in the locker room! According to the new rules, we must cover ourselves while walking to the showers and getting dressed. Now, for those of you who workout in the gyms across the land, you all know that there is usually a place for the modest to go behind a curtain. But for the great vast numbers of us, the locker room tradition is to bare all. In our gym, we have a rockin', good time talking up our lives and laughing together as we cleanup, dry off and primp ourselves back to business casual.

The amusing notion of getting dressed while hiding behind a towel makes for a contortionist's nightmare. I mean if God meant for us to be clothed all the time, wouldn't She have given us a third arm with which to hold the towel up?

I don't know. I'm feeling so edgy these days with all the intemperate outbursts and hate mongering and unabashed name calling, I feel like doing something in my garden in protest, something terribly anti-establishment, like ripping off my clothes Adam and Eve-like and dancing to Lily Allen's FU song.

Glad to get that off my naked chest. The Putterer