The Garden Workout
What an amazing month April is! It starts out dull and dreary, with the promise of things to come just peeping out of the ground through the remnants of last fall’s leaves, and ends up in full glorious flower, soft warm rains and sunny days bringing all those lovely bulbs, shrubs and trees into full flower for May.
As I write this, it is still April, some of you will be reading it in April (on the web site or my Blog), and some won’t see this column until May (in Grow Info), and I will be back from my week long trip to the deep south. I certainly will miss my garden while I am gone, but expect to return to find things a lot further along than when I left. I’ve been working furiously getting my April work done before I leave.
Raking, mulching, cleaning up sticks and debris, carrying hoses back out and hooking them up and putting out the deck furniture again, not to mention washing the deck and sweeping are great forms of exercise. Who needs to belong to a health club when you have a garden? Between working out in the garden and walking my dogs a couple of miles every day, plus my work as a painter, I get a complete work out!
This year, more than any other I have been conscious of what great exercise gardening is. You see, the trip I am taking to the deep south isn’t a vacation, it’s a Mission Trip, and I will be spending a week down in Louisiana with 47 other people, helping to rebuild homes destroyed by last season’s hurricanes. I expect to work very hard, sleep in a tent, shower outdoors, and come home exhausted, but with a huge grin on my face.
I expect to come home to a different garden than when I left, and I also expect to come home a somewhat different person too. I am traveling to a place I have never been before, and helping people I have never met, and may never see again. I will also see first hand the devastating effects that hurricanes have had on these people’s lives. And I will have had the chance to really demonstrate what kind of a Christian I am.
Next month expect a few stories about the trip, and possibly a picture or two. More information and pictures can be found on the Blog site set up about our trip at http://rgpckatrina2.blogspot.com which will be updated with pictures and stories while we are down in the bayous of Louisiana.
And now, back to my workout- see you in the Garden!
Ellen Leigh
