Off-Grid in West Virginia

Sunday

Linda

Pick a hat...Any hat.

People usually wear a straw hat when working in the garden and we have an array to choose from. Sonny prefers to wear his Panama hat for garden work. He looks quite the sophisticated farmer with it perched atop his head, especially while non-chalantly leaning on a shovel. He saves his misshapen sweat stained straw hat for the really dirty jobs like cutting the grass and making hay.

I don’t have a favorite hat of my own at this moment. My aren’t even straw. They are made from woven strands of paper. That seems to be the norm for women’s hats these days. They don’t even have sizes like mens hats do, only one size fits all. Unfortunately we all don’t have the same size head. Most of them are so big they fall down across my eyes unless I stuff my ponytail up in the crown as padding. That is not to say that I am a pinhead so don’t go there. Maybe the hat lasts they are using are left over from the days when women wore bouffant and beehive hairstyles. You can only use these woven paper hats when the sun shines. I’m not sure what a rain shower might do to them.

My grandfather used to wear a straw hat that had a small green plastic visor on the front brim. I guess it shaded the sun from his eyes but didn’t block his view from above. I like those hats. Sometimes the big brims get in the way and you can’t see where your going. I usually just pin them up.

A long time ago women used to wear sun bonnets like they wore on Little House on the Prairie. My Mom’s mother used to wear them and I think I still have one she made. No, you will not see me wearing one of those while we are making hay.

Sonny and I make sure we have extra hats so that family members can use them when they come to visit. Helping hands are always needed and are repaid with jars and baskets of goodies. I think I’ll find that pink gingham sun bonnet and set it aside for the next time my sister comes to visit. She’ll look quite fetching with the wide brim shading her face and the strings tied under her chin. I want to make sure she is well protected from the sun while she helps me in the garden. Now, where did I put that camera?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 3rd, 2011 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Off-Grid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.