After last week and this past Monday’s marathon session of gardening, I was sore. For days. I am still sore.
This is partly because I am woefully and tragically out of shape–if I had a totem animal it might be the wombat or the kingfisher, but the Pilsbury doughboy could also make a serious case. And I did a lot of bending and gave the backs of my legs (whatever those muscles are called) a serious job to do, and they have been sore for about a week.
Like, interfering with sex kinda sore. I mean, there are workarounds, but sheesh.
Aleve, wine, and heat help a little, but I spent most of yesterday in that unenviable state where dropping the last two inches onto the toilet seat (which is generally where those muscles come into play) was making me yawp like a kicked seal.
Today, I ran errands. Then I came home and flung myself at the yard, hacked some weeds, planted the majority of my new acquisitions, dumped out more mulch, and gave everybody in the garden a healthy drink of a weak manure tea. (I just mixed it up, I didn’t let it steep for a week in the sun, so it’s very weak, but hopefully yummy. I mean, if you’re a plant.)
I still need to lay out more dirt, plant three of the shrubs, and finish laying out manure as a soil amendment on the old bed, but having exhausted myself for the day, I had to call it until later. (Probably Friday. Tomorrow I will likely be crawling around and whimpering and using a heat pad.)
But I am undaunted! This is the hard part! This is the blood sacrifice to the gardening gods to assure a glorious harvest! (Not that I’m harvesting anything but aesthetic satisfaction and the glee of seeing hummingbirds and butterflies and hordes of bees. And probably basil. Still, that’s a pretty decent harvest.)
I want to take some photos tomorrow when we have actual sun, just so that I can show the world what my yard looks like when it’s completely uninspiring and looks like a bunch of dirt with some twigs sticking out of it. Then the "after" photos will look particularly impressive. Particularly once I plant in all the bare spots with annuals come summer…
