Couch-potato gardening

Any idiot knows that a couch potato who plunges into a strenuous exercise program without properly stretching is setting herself up for serious pain the next day, right? So why was I so surprised last weekend when a few hours of gardening made me feel like lying down in the middle of the road?

Granted, I've been out of practice since last summer, when my daily gardening routine was interrupted by surgery and chemotherapy and radiation followed by winter. But now I'm full of energy and ready to get planting, but my planting muscles are still hibernating.

I spent a mere two hours Friday afternoon putting some annuals in my butterfly garden, working up a sweat with a lot of bending and stooping and carrying big bags of manure and buckets of water. It felt great at first, but the next morning I was stiff.

I thought a nice long walk would loosen me up a bit, and it did...until about four miles into a six-mile walk, when every muscle in my body begged me to lie right down in the middle of the road. The only way to get home was to keep on walking, which I did to a chorus of complaining muscles.

If a little butterfly garden can prostrate me, what will happen when I get down and dirty in the big vegetable plots? Clearly, I need to warm up before I take up trowel and hoe--stretches in the asparagus patch, lunges among the zucchini, and then reach for the sky to pull sunshine down on my tomatoes.

Four days later I'm still sore from last Friday, but my butterfly garden is rewarding my hard work. The new plants are still puny, but remember that wild columbine I "rescued" from the roadside two years ago? (Read it here.) This spring it's bigger than our cultivated columbines and it's blooming like crazy, producing those brilliant orange and yellow blossoms in great abundance. Now if the plants I put in last week will just put in a little effort, our front garden will soon be a haven for butterflies and hummingbirds, and I'll enjoy sitting and watching them while I rest my aching muscles.