Shaky, Achy Garden Girl

Sometimes when it rains hard for a few hours, the trees seem to appear greener and the birds seem louder. Today there is a soothing rain falling, off and on, at a very moderate rate making for lovely background sounds and colors. Plus, the garden won't need water for a few days.

In keeping with the 'green theme' it's important to note the water situation. Watering every day, even when the seed or plant packages tell you to, is not a good idea. Conservation is a major principle of green gardening, so it's best to choose plants that either don't need a lot of water, or that can be forced to root down farther with infrequent but deep watering. Many perennials will sink their roots farther down and out into the soil to obtain water when water is not coming from above. You can force this situation by withholding water, and then giving a less frequent good soaking of about one inch of water.

So the rain today alleviates this problem for me. And it is good well beyond the conservation issue. In the humidity, my bones ache like crazy. My arthritis is acting up in my spine, my hands, knees, shoulders...pretty much everywhere. It's okay. I think most people start to degenerate in one way or another anyway, in the spine and elsewhere, as they age. I sometimes refer to my facial wrinkles as visual decomposition, but no one really likes to hear that. The spondoloysthesis is when the vertabrae in your back slip forward and pinch the discs and nerves. My pelvic nerves are pinched which are the ones that support my legs, so sometimes I just randomly fall down for no good reason. I think that's fun!

I should mention that I'm 38, not 98.

The good thing for today is that when I'm feeling like this, I can't do much in the way of heavy lifting or bending down so that leaves fewer options available, and this is when I blog.

Here is the part where I wax philosophical on my perceived disability:

I was a really active kid, a tomboy really. As a preteen and teenager I was a decent athlete, very physically strong, a fast runner - a GOOD runner, and very energetic. It's only in the last four years or so that I have started to notice myself slowing down. For awhile I wrote it off as stress; we were at the time living in Italy (in 2004) on a military base and my husband was in Iraq. After that I thought it was just normal aging. Then I noticed that women my age, friends, were running marathons and climbing mountains and hiking the Appalachian Trail. This was a big "hmmm" -inducer for me.
Realizing that you're not as strong as you used to be is a turning point for all of us; some of us come to that point earlier in life than others. Many others have come to it long before I have, so I will resist the self-pity trap. It's more a matter of recognizing it and compensating for it, realizing that some days will be better than others and that when I push myself TOO hard, I will pay for it in pain.

So, for today, I think I'm going to take my lesson from the rain and just simply fall down.
No, no, that's not what I meant. Try again.

So for today, I think I'm going to use the rain as an excuse to crawl back to bed.
I didn't mean that either....

So for today, I'm going to take my cue from my joints and simply slow down!

(that's better, don't you think?)