FORWARD MOMENTUM

I woke up this morning and lay there reluctant to move.  Last week was full of places to be, volunteer missions to accomplish, and consulting and planning to get Tourism’s summer season off to a start so that I could dedicate this week to my own season opener work.  There is so much to do this time of year and the weather conditions have not been making it easy.

But, there is no use wimping about it – if I want to relax in the midst of pretty lawns and gardens during the summer I have to put in the work in the spring.  I had invested heavily (this sounds more responsible that saying ‘went wild and crazy’) at more than just one local greenhouse and all these pretty things needed to get outside where they could grow and flourish or my money would be wasted.  Thursday morning I got up, fortified myself with high octane caffeine wonder liquid, and dug in.  This is not a figurative term – in the past two days there has been a lot of digging going on.

I got a lot done that day.  It’s good to build up momentum while your muscles are unaware of how far you are going to push them.  For starters I finished filling my deck planters – that sounds simple but there is a lot of heavy lifting, soil mixing and walking involved with that job.  When my Fitbit informed me that I had already reached 10,000 steps by 10:00 in the morning I reconsidered my choice that it was wasteful to use the quad for all those little trips.  I didn’t know how many steps I actually had in me.

Besides, by that time I had tripped in a gopher hole while delivering a part to the field across the road – there were no immediate ill effects but at my age I know how that goes.  Walking back to the house I pondered which injury was going to cause me the most pain; the hip/knee fall or where I hit my hand with the hammer driving in a stake to mark my row of tomatoes. So far, it’s a tie.

After an early lunch I tackled the lawn.  So far this year it’s not a big job – a good portion of it is under water.  But it did take long enough to prove that sunscreen would have been a really good idea.  I have to relearn that lesson every single year. 

By this time my body started to complain, as I knew it would. I eased off on the physical stuff and instead stood in my greenhouse trying to imagine where all these bedding plants would do the best.  Deciding ‘the plan’ literally takes as much time and effort as planting does, but at least I could do it standing still.  Which, of course, was a mistake – standing still robbed me of any momentum I had left.  If the walk back to the house had been up hill I don’t think I would have made it.

Bravely I turned down the temptation of a glass of wine (the exact opposite of high octane morning go juice) and got supper in the oven.  There were still a few more things I had to do before dark … feed the heifers, pick asparagus, do a little bit of push mowing, and see if my little tiller could stir up the mud in my lower flower bed.  I made the animals happy, gathered asparagus, and prayed that neither the mower or tiller would start.  It’s a cruel world – they did.

The rest of the day is a blur; we ate and went to bed.  The fresh asparagus was delicious.

Day two was all about putting out bedding plants, hand tilling places that can’t be done any other way, kneeling, standing, walking, forgetting what you were going for, remembering when you get back, going again, and being sent off to town for a part again (My apologies for anyone who witnessed me in my gardening attire.  There was a time when I would have changed for a 15 minute town run; this rule no longer stands.)  I didn’t reach 10,000 steps until 1:33, obviously I had slowed down considerably but quitting is not an option.  The rest of the day was spent plodding forward and texting with my sister, comparing gardening progress and making sure we were both still upright.  We both got done what we wanted to before the rain – yay us!

There’s till more to do … veggie garden if it ever dries up enough to get out there, and back to volunteer Tourism stuff … more flowers and trees and painting … but that won’t be today.

As I mentioned, this morning I spent some time assessing aches and pains before actually moving.  My husband tells me that it’s easier to count the things that don’t hurt rather than listing the things that do.  So far today – 10:21 – and I’ve only made 1,072 steps.  Considering that my body has informed me that it’s on strike, I’m doing fine!