I’m a week behind in posting a writing prompt. I came down with some sort of plague that knocked me flat out cold and it seems to have overlapped with the onset of spring seasonal allergies. Through even the worst days when I could barely get up and get dressed, I thought about the garden and my list of early season chores. Tasks like sowing seed are time-sensitive and I worried about falling so far behind that I’d be unable to catch up, when and if I ever had energy again.
This experience had me thinking a lot about the physicality of gardening. I have my own health issues, and I remember how difficult it was to do some simple tasks last summer when I cut a piece off the end of one of my fingers. I often make light-hearted jokes about my start of the garden season aches and pains, but for the most part I am able to do the work of gardening without many physical limits.
This is not the case for everyone. Many of you nurture plants through and despite a wide range of acute and chronic physical limitations. How did you keep the garden going through surgery, illness, or long or short term disability? Did pregnancy pose any limits? How have you had to cut back or completely alter your work in the garden (or the style of garden you now have), and what effect has that had on you and your gardening life?
Grow Write Guild Prompt #26: Write about your experience/s as a gardener dealing with physical limitations.
The Grow Write Guild is a creative writing club for people who love to garden. Everyone is welcome to participate! Click over to the Grow Write Guild FAQ to learn more about it.
A garden is like your best friend. Even when you are separated by time, even long stretches of time, when you get back together you connect as though that time apart was just seconds and minutes. The only thing you know for sure is how happy your are to be with them again. It is not any more complex than that.
Beautifully said.
i have to agree too… but id say garden is your best friend :)
I have to admit that this spring, kneeling or stooping in the garden, to plant or weed, has become more difficult. I can get down, but I can’t get up. So, I’ve resorted to talking my younger relatives into helping me, in exchange for future produce. However, I can see this warring thin, and fast. I’ll have to come up with something more clever than, “Please help me now and I’ll give you a head of cabbage this summer.” I’m going to drive everyone away, rather than showing them what joy gardening has to offer.
However, if that happens, then I may have to spend the money and hire a day worker. I figure, that once things are planted I’ll be alright, I can work, standing upright, you know, weeding with a hoe and using other tools with long handles.
The other thing I’m noticing is that I’m unable to spot damage due to insects. I can’t see those minute details at a distance. So I’m missing some important and early tell-tale signs. In the past I always believed that early detection and early treatment usually fixed things for good. I might have to do some major doctoring, or pricey treatments, later in the season, or risk total crop failure.
I’d like to have some raised beds like the ones found in our friend’s post, (see “Daily” the previous post above). I hope she doesn’t mind me mentioning them, but her photos make her beds look ideal. If somehow I could bring everything up to table or at least chair level, I could manage without so much help.
Of course, better than raised beds would be greenhouses. Like the ones that CZ Guest had on her Long Island estate (Sorry to say that they are soon to be raised for new housing.) Or, a simpler greenhouse made out of plastic sheeting, like those designed by Eliot Coleman.
I’ll work something out for this year. I’ve already promised two cabbage heads and a dozen carrots so far.
Sam Webb, Men’s Garden Club of Pittsburgh
I have several disabling diagnoses….Osteoarthritis in spine, hands, and feet, fibromyalgia, I’ve had back surgeries and broken bones but every March I start seeding and growing flowers and veggies….It is hard but I make choices…the laundry or water the seedlings…dishes or transplanting….I always chose what gives me more joy and gardening always wins over housework…Being disable you have limitations but gardening gives a satisfaction and pleasure that helps ease chronic pain. Gardening releases endorphins which is a natural pain reliever…
gayla, i really responded to this prompt, but not in the way i think you intended. keep up the great work!
http://puusdooroftime.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/back-in-the-garden-grow-write-guild-23/