The Gnat Hat

So tiny, yet so cruel

I am not a fashion expert.  This is made patently clear to me when well-meaning friends drop by on a Saturday with a matronly yard sale find in hand and say “I thought of you when I saw it.”  So you will excuse me for offering a bit of fashion advice in the garden this week, but I feel that I must share with you one of the best clothing inventions to ever appear this side of Milan:  The Gnat Hat.

I know that I am going out on a limb here.  I have never participated in a fashion revolution, much less started one, but this is an idea whose time has come.  Clever, easily made and inexpensive, it will revolutionize your time in the garden, and it may make your children’s soccer games a lot more enjoyable too.  But before we go any further into the “how”, a little background information as to the “why”.

The first morning in our new old house in Maryland, I woke up, sat on the porch and couldn’t see the grass for the swarm of tiny little black gnats that were hovering around my face and neck.  I naively put it down to the wet autumn we were having.  Yet, come spring and on into summer, the gnats were still there, only worse.  How exactly was I supposed to pull weeds, much less stand in the garden, with these things making Kamikaze targets out of my eyeballs?  I looked at the people around me – amazingly the gnats were not a topic of conversation.  Instead, arms mechanically performed a gesture I would come to know well over the next seven years, the “Gnat Swipe” – one hand waving in a slow, robotic fashion in front of one’s face – the other hand occasionally picking a stray wayfarer out of one’s nostrils.

Well, let me tell you here and now, I am no wimp.  I have climbed Mt. Kilamanjaro with a smile on my face, braved flying cockroaches in the Caribbean and canoed across a radioactive lake in Norway.   If these gnats were too much for me, I wasn’t going to be the one to say it.  So, for seven long years, I sprayed repellent onto my visor, rubbed lemon balm onto my face, held my arm high over my head and swiped until I could swipe no more.  It didn’t matter.  The little carnivores played happy hour with my ears, which promptly swelled and itched and made me homicidal.  It seemed nothing would stop them.

So I tried to be strong instead.  I went on field trips with my children to study river dwelling insects, tears streaming down my face.  I sat for hours at soccer games wishing I could watch from the car.  I decided to pretend that they really weren’t that bad, that I was “getting used to them”.  Let’s face it, it’s hard enough to be a newcomer in a small town without screaming at the top of your lungs “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!!!!!!” at your kids’ baseball game.

Then my mother came out to visit.

DIY "Gnat Hat"

My parents live in California.  There is not enough green vegetation in that State to attract dieting locusts much less a swarm of moisture loving gnats.  She was traumatized.   She point blank refused to weed until something could be done about the problem.  I offered the “bug-suit” my husband had given me for Christmas.  For some reason, she didn’t think being swathed head to toe in scratchy polyester netting at 50% humidity was comfortable.  She looked around for an alternative, and, I am happy to say, she found one.

Taking an old pith style helmet I had laying around, she found some black tulle I had used to cover the zucchini last year and cut a yard of it.  She put the helmet on, put the tulle over the top of it and tied it behind her neck.  Voilá.  No more gnats.  Netting you could easily see through, with  hands free operation.  She wouldn’t share, so I grabbed an old visor, grabbed another yard of tulle and made another one.   No sewing required.  We weeded in gnat-free bliss together.  It gave me such a feeling of satisfaction to see the little beasts crawling on the netting three inches from my face and know they were not getting any further.   It was wonderful.  It was like the invention of fire to the caveman.  It was the “Gnat Hat”.

I’ve taken a little flak for my fashion statement since (mostly from my husband) however, the main object of curiosity at the garden tour two weeks ago was not my lovely rugosa rose nor my blossoming privet, it was my Gnat Hat.  How did I make it, how much did it cost, why wasn’t everyone wearing them?  I can’t answer the last question.  Personally, I would put it down to everyone trying to pretend that the gnats don’t really bother them. And to the hardened Marylander, maybe they don’t.  However, I am now brave enough to admit that they sure as heck bother me, and I’m not going to take it anymore.

Function over fashion

Now I am not without it in the garden.  I am not without it in other people’s gardens either.  And, if you see a woman sitting at soccer practice in a long dress and a veiled hat, it’s not the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt – it’s me.   I am the one smiling in the face of gnat-filled evenings – content to take my time over a conversation with friends in the middle of the field while they bravely swipe away in quiet turmoil.   For a dollar’s worth of tulle, you too can enjoy your garden again.  Go on, don’t try to tough it out.  Join me, and we’ll revolutionize garden fashion together – one Gnat Hat at a time.