Proving yet again that just because you can, doesn't mean you should

TOLEDO, Ohio — Did you know that World Naked Gardening Day is this weekend?

Of course not, because you're probably a decent and upright human being.

There seems to be a national day for everything, and that gives entrepreneurial ranking agencies a reason to do even more ranking.

That's the case with Lawnstarter.com, which decided to rank the top 15 cities in which to observe naked gardening day.

World Naked Gardening Day was founded in 2005 by Mark Storey of Seattle.

“It’s just a way to get a little more comfortable with our bodies in a nonsexual way,” Storey told LawnStarter.com.

In polls, Storey said, gardening comes in as the second-most-desirable activity to perform nude, trailing only swimming.

The day is “a lighthearted way people can do something for the Earth. There’s something about nudity, plus the care of the soil, plus the caring for the Earth, that seems to resonate.”

Based on a combination of factors, Toledo came in at No. 9 on the list of best cities for observing World Naked Gardening Day.



To compile the list, Lawnstarter ranked the top 100 U.S. metro areas by various weather factors for May 4.

Lawnstarter said to create its rankings, it reasoned what would be an ideal day for naked gardening:

Warm but not hot: 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

100 percent sun.

A gentle breeze of 5 mph — just enough to keep sweat off the birthday suit.

A relative humidity level of 45 percent, which most people find very comfortable outdoors.

"We then took predicted measurements for each of the top 100 Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United States and compared them to the ideal. The closer a city’s predicted climate was to the ideal, the higher it scored."

We're not sure if anyone from Lawnstarter has tried gardening in the nude in Toledo in November, but we're pretty sure they'd quickly find a flaw in their reasoning.

The cheeky top 10 rankings include:

1. Bakersfield, Calif.

2. Ogden, Utah

3. Detroit (!)

4. St. Louis

5. Lakeland, Fla.

6. Los Angeles

7. Memphis, Tenn.

8. Salt Lake City

9. TOLEDO