DEAR MISS MANNERS: This time of year, it often rains in the afternoon, and so I carry an umbrella with me. However, many people do not.

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On occasion, it will start raining when I am in a crowd — at the ballpark, for example, or waiting for the light to change on a crowded sidewalk. If I open my umbrella, then the rain that hits it falls onto the people next to me, most of whom do not have umbrellas. Several have commented that it is rude or selfish of me to add to their rain burden.

While I understand their unhappiness, it was their choice to leave the house without an umbrella. Is it rude of me to use mine in these situations?

GENTLE READER: Are you hoping that Miss Manners will say it is fine that your umbrella is channeling additional water onto the person in the seat next to you because you are only adding to the soaking that umbrella-less people deserve? Or that poking someone in the eye when you open it is reasonable collateral damage?

Those hopes would be in vain.

If you have — or want — a relationship with someone next to you, you can offer to share. If not, you are going to have to find a way to create some distance from those who are less prepared.

If absolutely stuck next to them, you could open your umbrella just enough to make a small tent over your head, in which case it will drip only onto your own shoulders. But you would be excused for grumbling that it rains on the just and the unjust.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am lucky enough to have gardens all around my house, including along a city sidewalk. My problem is how to respond in a cordial, or at least a civil, way to friends and neighbors who ask me complicated questions about my garden while I am working in it.

These are not people who know how to garden, which is part of why answering them is complicated. I hate to be rude, but I also want to complete my task.

My responses have included pretending I don’t hear the person, or saying, “If you really want to know about this, we can find a time to talk when I’m not gardening.” But my rudeness doesn’t stop them!

I don’t want to resort to running and hiding, since then I leave the task undone. My plants need me more than my questioners!

GENTLE READER: While she agrees that neither pretending not to hear nor running and hiding are good solutions, Miss Manners believes that offering a later time will work if you persist politely.

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The key may be to keep working while you make the offer. If the questioner tries to keep the conversation going (“Yes, but I was wondering …”), the answer is, “That’s exactly the sort of thing we should find another time to discuss” — as you continue to dig and water.

You can then say “excuse me” and find a task that requires you to face a different direction.

Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, [email protected]; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.