Yard Work

Because I am trying to be a Person Who Exercises, I started keeping track of something physical I’ve done each day. Last week looks like this:

Monday: Tennis
Tuesday: er…
Wednesday: Push A. in stroller around the block
Thursday: Mow back yard
Friday: Gardening
Saturday: Gardening
Sunday: Gardening
Monday: Gardening

(Yesterday, in case you were dying to know, I spent twenty minutes on the stationary bike in my bedroom—which Jesse fixed last week for me. The “up” button went bad and made the bike go to the hardest resistance setting, a setting I had absolutely no intention of ever using. So, after the bike spent months as a clothes-draping piece of ugly furniture, Jesse diagnosed the problem and replaced the button with a new one. One less excuse…)

All the flowerbeds in the back yard were buried under a carpet of weeds, which I ripped out with my bare hands. Okay, fine, I wore gloves. But, still, I spent literally hours kneeling on mulch and grass, tearing at stubborn weeds that have been growing better than anything else planted in my yard so far.

Once I cleared the beds, I fertilized the azaleas and the roses, sprayed weed killer on the front yard, and tried to ignore the sound of weeds laughing at my feeble attempts at their destruction. We’ll see if the weed killer did any good. I have a feeling it didn’t. The back yard is au naturale, since that’s where we’ve got the veggie garden, so there the weeds live in happy protection.

Ah, the veggie garden. Last year’s was a dismal failure. And that’s not an exaggeration. This year, Sharon has decided she’d like to join my sinking ship, so we’re planting a joint venture in the garden spot from last year. We’ve done an initial weed-pulling pass and have bought most of our plants. Mom and Dad came down to help us till a bigger plot and plant the whole lot of it—pole beans, tomatoes, zucchini (including a fancy Italian heirloom variety I’m particularly excited about), squash, cucumber, lettuce, bok choy, broccoli, bell peppers, jalapeño and two or three other seasoning peppers, a billion types of basil, parsley, cilantro, and other stuff I’m probably forgetting. (Oh yeah, some marigolds and sunflowers for pest control. And beauty!)

We’re trying to do this thing right. We’ve got soil testing kits, and Sharon’s been reading all sorts of gardening websites. We’re going to set aside a couple mornings a week specifically for intensive gardening, and I’m hoping the extra attention will be what the veggies need to thrive. She even bought Story these adorable golashes and her own set of pink plastic gardening tools. Too cute.

So, hopefully this year my yard will provide a place for heart-disease-preventing physical activity and vegetables.

But we’ll see about that last one…