Photo courtesy West County gloves

In today's column in The Baltimore Sun, I suggest some gifts for the gardener on your list this holiday season.

The list looks an awful lot like my wish list, but perhaps that's just a coincidence.

Garden gifts are a sore subject between my friend Michelle and her husband. It seems he bought her a beautiful, and somewhat expensive, pair of gardening gloves for her birthday and she was thrilled.

But she couldn't bring herself to wear them. "They were too nice and too expensive," she explained. How could she possibly use them in the dirt?

Her husband was equal parts confused and exasperated.

So, if you are thinking of getting the gardener on your list a fancy new pair of garden gloves, you might want to reconsider. It might make more sense to purchase the garden gloves my old friend Joe used to buy for his friends at the holiday.

He found them at an Army surplus store, made of cheap cotton and with black nibs on the palm to improve the grip.

I think they were five pairs for $10.

Joe gave me those gloves every Christmas for years. Over time, I ruined or lost every pair.

 But I never felt bad about it at all.