Alpine Gardening

My family has deemed these gloves as the ugliest pair ever designed. I have to admit that even when I bought them, in a fit of utter desperation during a ski trip to Colorado, I thought they were a tad "loud."

Truth is, these gloves are warm, so I use them for shoveling snow in the winter. The leather is worn in, and they are just big enough to let my fingers breath.

Today, they became my gardening gloves, as my old ones met with an untimely demise last summer when we cleaned out our basement.

These US Ski Team relics may be ugly, but I love them. No blisters or slivers today, and we are minus a load of leaves and a tree that made a mess during Superstorm Sandy.

I will never wear these on the slopes again, but they bring back fond memories of Steamboat Springs, and the year I found out that skiing in powder was not as easy as it looked in a Warren Miller skiing film.