Stinging nettles?

Okay, so I went out to get the paper this morning, usually hubby's job, and decided to pull a few weeds while I was there. Hubby and I do this all the time. Yank a few here, a few there as they tend to pop up after rains. Anyway, I spent maybe 3 minutes pulling said weeds when my fingers started to burn and itch. I dropped the weeds into an empty flower pot and went inside to wash my hands. My fingers were turning bright red and starting to swell, so I yanked my rings off and smeared aloe vera on my hands. The burning subsided but the redness and swelling took about 45 minutes to go down. We keep antihistamine in the house for scorpion stings but I don't like taking them because they make me wiggy, so I skipped them.

I've never, ever had a reaction like this and with a little online digging, found that we probably had some stinging nettle weeds in the yard and that's what caused my fingers to go all red and ugly. Yeah, I know, use gloves! Well, we do use gloves when digging around in holes and under plants and rocks, since we have poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions here. But we don't usually need gloves to pull pesky grass and weeds that like to disrupt our xeriscaped yard. Lesson learned though. I will use gloves next time.

Now to work on my next novel. Have a great weekend and keep away from weeds!

Happy reading!