Only a fool would go out to run a spring marathon after sitting on the sofa all winter, so what made me think I could dive right back into heavy-duty gardening on the first clear dry day of spring? After just a few hours in the garden, I have sunburn and sore fingers and an achy elbow and a cranky back and an ant bite on the back of my hand. I also have creeping phlox covering an annoying spot in the front garden, pachysandra filling in some blank spots on a slope, and basil, dill, and rosemary in the herb garden, where they'll join the thyme, oregano, sage, and fennel that returned from last season.
And then there's the yucca. Last week we dug up a monstrous yucca plant from our daughter and son-in-law's front garden, or rather a cluster of yuccas clustered around a stubborn root as thick and tough as a fencepost. They've been sitting on our front lawn all week waiting for the rain to stop, but now those yuccas are planted along a well-drained slope near the driveway. Nothing much likes to grow there, but yuccas are tough and these were free so if even a few survive, we'll be happy.
Oh to be as tough as a yucca! Today we did the easy stuff; putting in the vegetable garden takes the game to a whole new level. I need some conditioning exercises to get me in shape when we go Full Veg. Start with some stretches: the weeding bend, the hoe twist, the harvest squat. Carry water buckets and bushel baskets filled with ever-increasing weights, and practice clasping fingers tightly around the trowel handle to prepare for grasping and pulling weeds.
To exercise the elbow and wrist, practice snapping a damp bandana toward the small of your back as if to repel a persistent horsefly. Do the don't-step-on-the-ants two-step, the make-it-go-away Macarena. Develop a stillness to serene you can work with sweat dripping in your eyeballs, blisters bursting on your hands, and flies crawling on the back of your neck.
That's the sort of workout I need to get me ready for gardening season. Too late for this year. Maybe next winter, right around the bleakest part of January, someone should put a trowel in my hand and put me through my paces so that I won't poop out when gardening season finally arrives.
1 comment:
Before Commencement I planted starts, with my fingers alone. The soil in our new beds is soft, wet and rich, but yeah verily, though I scrubbed well, I also thanked Goodness and the parking meter gods that faculty assessments don't yet have a line about dirt under fingernails.
D.
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