Totally agree with you all--I love the term 'hand blind'--definitely how I feel when working with gloves. But to work with anything with thorns, stickers, etc., the gloves are necessary.

I found a relatively inexpensive (<$10) thick leather pair in the *hardware* section at Home Depot--was able to remove two extremely thorny, dying rose bushes with that pair, and lots of wear left.

I start off each year wearing gloves, but find I am removing them often to use my fingernails as tools. (They end up looking awful, and are then cut short.) After a week or maybe two, I begin "forgetting" to bring gloves along. After a month or so, I don't make excuses to myself, I just gleefully go glove free. Even when pruning thorny things, unless it is a big job. I mentally kick myself for the scratches on my hands, but I can't seem to leave the garden to get some gloves. I noted above, Stilldew keeps a pair in her pocket. Great idea for those thorny moments!

I typically always wear gloves mostly because I am in an out of the house a lot so gardening is sparse. I dont know if anyone else has thought of this, but when I am doing light work just with dirt in a bed or moving plants around, and seeding, I wear latex/plastic gloves. This way i can keep my hands clean if I need to, but I can also feel the dirt and squishyness of the plants as I work. Then I wear the thicker gardening gloves for using the shovel or pulling up thorny plants to protect my hands against potential injury. So I think it is a win-win with the latex gloves and I can always go without if I dont have any plans that day!

Welcome to All Things Plants, @AriaPlantaholic !

Those thin gloves definitely save on soap and towels (as long as a person remembers to put them on...)

Welcome to ATP @AriaPlantaholic!