So I was complaining to a colleague about how my back hurt from five hours of gardening on Sunday, way too much time and more than I usually spend, but it was warm and I'm feeling behinder and behinder with weeding, mulching and planting.
He looked at me and said, "Yeah, but it's a good kind of hurt." True enough.
All better now and rarin' to get back to it. And feeling a sense of accomplishment. Yes, there's a ton more to do but a lot's been done.
Were you out working in the sunshine on Sunday? it was a glorious day. I planted eight containers, all of them large and half of them new. They needed so much potting soil, I made two trips to the garden center. But guess what.
Even after interviewing experts on container gardening last fall, watching one plant several of them (with incredible results) and writing a story about it, I found I'm still a novice when I tried to do it myself.
Shopping for annuals to plant in the containers was an exercise in impulsive shopping rather than creative study. I remember one garden designer suggesting that we choose plants and place them in the cart as they would look in the container and decide from there how they'd look in our pots at home. That was great advice. Too bad I didn't follow it. There was so much to choose from, I had a devil of a time making up my mind.
The good news is that no matter what goes into the container, once it grows it'll probably look fine. I'm trying cannas and cardinal climber for the first time, along with an array of snapdragons, hanging geraniums and other stuff. As the experts always say to do, I tried to mix color, size and texture. Can't wait to see how they do.
I guess a back that hurts from gardening is like the pain of childbirth. Once you're feeling better, you forget how bad it was. It gets distilled into "a good kind of hurt" - and you find yourself thinking the once unthinkable .. that you might even try it again sometime.
