Most days of the week at least one of my finger nails is painted a curious colour. Today I'm wearing an on-trend metallic green on my pinky. When I see other women with just one decorated digit, I reckon rather than following the fashion for rocking a feature nail, just like me they are probably simply taking the lazy way of trying the latest polish shade to across their desks.
This is because I spend a bit of time at events and launches about town checking out the grooming habits of my fellow beauty editors. We're an odd mix of young dollies and old ducks - I fall squarely in the latter camp - and trying products is a big part of our job. For most of us, regular deadlines mean there simply isn't the time to commit to the effort of giving ourselves endless manicures.
Thank heavens then for gardening gloves which we all needed last week when around a dozen of us were rounded up to plant trees. As PR exercises go it was a good one, and fun to see everyone in casual gear, barring one glamourpuss in a designer dress who swears she was a last-minute ring-in. This being a fashion and beauty crowd, there was much talk about the merits of high-heeled gumboots as worn in Manhattan and Hong Kong when the sidewalks get sloshy. Rather than donning Marc Jacobs, I slipped into a pair of No. 1 Shoe Warehouse black gumboots to tread the shingle path leading to the Cascades Reserve in Howick, where a pile of native trees awaited our attentions.
Our mission was to plant a mere few hundred, adding to the 10,000 trees the New Zealand Landcare Trust has already committed to its first urban outreach, called the Volcano to the Sea project. This independent charitable trust, set up in 1996, has done much to encourage sustainable land management in rural areas, including working with farmers to replant ecologically fragile areas and restore wetlands.
