Gardening is rife with thorny issues.

To till or not to till? That�s just one of the questions. Organic methods are great, but are they worth the effort? Growers are introducing some truly amazing hybrids, but what about native species? Will the honey bee perish if you don�t devote large swaths of space to coneflower and milkweed? GMO or hell no?

It seems only fitting that we add what to wear to the debate. And � wouldn�t you know it? � Saturday marks the 12th anniversary of World Naked Gardening Day. Luckily for us, our region will have passed its last frost date by then.

As my colleague Aarik Danielsen points out today in his column over in Ovation, our calendars have become packed with an abundance of days and months devoted to the observation of very specific things, which range from the solemn to the silly.

But World Naked Gardening Day, observed on the first Saturday of May, seems to have a bit more purpose than some of the other specially designated days. According to the World Naked Gardening Day website � you probably should not Google this at work � the purpose of the holiday is to urge people to �tend their portion of the world�s garden unclothed as nature intended.�

The site also includes a quote from nature boy poet Walt Whitman:

�Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! � ah, if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! � Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is � not what faith or art or health really is.�

Well then.

Perhaps it�s really time to throw our socially constructed notions of decency � and our clothes � to the wind and expose to the sun those areas where the sun had not previously shone.

Of course, this brings up a new issue.

Skin cancer, as we know, is a very real problem. Those broad-brimmed straw hats gardeners seem to be so fond of are more than a fashion statement. They are a safety precaution.

So, too, are long-sleeved shirts and pants, tucked into socks, which protect against the biting bugs that carry West Nile virus and Lyme disease.

A good sunscreen and insect repellent, applied liberally and frequently, can stave off these misfortunes.

Still, the naked gardener probably will not want to abandon his or her gloves and, if using a shovel or some form of machinery involving blades, boots. One wouldn�t want to mar World Naked Gardening Day with the trauma of a severed toe.

But naked gardening can be traumatic in other ways, too.

I remember walking home from school as a child one day and glancing toward our house to see my father riding the mower. It was a peaceful scene. Mowing the yard was one of my father�s favorite activities. He enjoyed the gentle whirring of the mower�s engine and the immediate satisfaction of seeing his progress as he drove back and forth, back and forth.

I smiled to myself.

But then my father started to turn the mower, and I saw far more than I wanted to. It appeared he was riding the mower naked.

Mortified, I looked down at the ground and turned my back to him, walking hurriedly sideways like a crab the rest of the way to the house.

My father killed the engine and called out a greeting to me. I raised my hand in reply and kept shuffling.

�What�s got you acting so squirrely?� he asked, walking toward me.

�Nothing,� I mumbled, continuing my crabwalk toward the house.

�Young lady, you look at me when I speak to you,� he said.

I sighed and turned to face him. Only then did I see that he was wearing yellow shorts. My nearsightedness, which up to this point had gone undiagnosed, had blurred his clothing to create an illusion of nudity.

My heart soared, and I ran to hug my father.

�I�m so glad you�re not naked,� I told him.

�Go do your homework,� he replied.

Even then, the irony was not lost on me: �Twas myopia that caused my troubles in the first place, but had my father truly been naked it would have been myopia that spared me.

And so perhaps next weekend I will make a point to leave my glasses behind.