Who said gardening was for the elderly?

O.k., today I can hardly move in any direction without feeling my body crying for mercy. I have been gingerly lowering myself to the seating position and standing up. My core hurts, my sides hurt, the tiny muscles under my underarms ache. I crossed my legs today in church and my quads screamed in protest. The back of neck hurts, shoot my fingertips hurt as I type this post.

Say it with me, "No pain, no gain!"

So what is the source of all this glorious agony? You can guess from the title, gardening (I also danced for 2 hours straight the night before at my sons' elementary school function). Yesterday we started on our new venture and it was truly a way to get moving. I've seen my elders spend hours in their gardens and people profess that it is a stress reliever. Well, either I'm doing it wrong or the only reason you don't stress is cause you can't. My stress muscles hurt!

We have bought a new construction since moving to the NC and the ground around our house is packed red clay. The yard, as a bonus, is filled with rocks hidden beneath the surface. As I attempted to plunge the shovel spade into the ground to make the first dent for the plot, my shovel stopped dead on top of one of these incognito rocks. I had to keep stabbing the earth around it to make any progress. After getting the first piece of ground to budge, it didn't prove any easier.

I managed to remove the top layer of grass from a plot about 9ft x 6ft. I recruited my four children to remove rocks and rake the turned over dirt as I shoveled and took belligerent stabs at the relentless clay. Ok now I know why farm families have so many children. My children, though, would starve or produce a very pitiful crop if our livelihood depended on it. They haphazardly raked the dirt and picked up rocks ever-so-often. Savannah found she preferred throwing the dirt at her brothers and jumping on the lid of the garbage can to the actual task at hand.

Matt joined me after he returned from Wal-Mart with our ten bags of top soil and Miracle Gro. Never hurts to add a miracle when I'm involved with plants. My thumb has been brown and withered in the past. Anyway after watching my children for about an hour I released them, even though I remember very vividly that this entire venture started when Max brought home the apple seeds from his lunch in November. He and the other kids have been bugging me non-stop about having a garden since the first leaves sprouted in our windowsill jar of dirt. Please--they ran to the front yard and happliy passed the shovel, rake and dream of that garden on to me and their father without so much as a glance backward.

Matt attacked the rest of the shoveling and I raked and squatted to remove rocks for another 3 and half hours. The process was bearable as I reminded myself of the great workout I had to be getting. It was only slightly marred as Matt started crazy talk about moving to a farm. He attempted to be somewhat serious until we finally finished digging and raking the ground. As the sun retreated and the natural light became more of a haze Matt was ready to quit, but I made us persevere until the last of the new soil was laid and raked and smoothed into place. He gave up talks of a farm after that.

That's my motto, though. Chug along until what you've set out to do is done (that and my attention span is short--had we stopped I would've lost the garden battle before it began).

So, today's get moving and food advice: buy a house with a crappy yard and: burn some calories and build some muscle, save some bucks in the fruit and vegetable aisles and eat healthier as you enjoy your future bounty.