THE MIDDLE AGES: GARDENER DOWN!

WHEN FLOWERS HURT

Gardening in The Middle Ages is its own form of exquisite torture. Forget the rack, don’t send me to the tower, I won’t be put in the stockades. Instead I will plant flowers. That will be punishment enough.

After lugging a 20-pound bag of potting soil from the driveway up the stairs to the terrace, my back lost track of its chakras. That can only mean one thing: Gardener down! 

I started humming John Lennon’s I’m a Loser but at least I know when I'm beat.  I called Husband Number Two to come outside, scrape me off the patio, then carry the second bag up. 

Ten years ago, it was all so easy. I gardened from morning to dusk and beyond. After mosquitoes started biting, after squirrels hurried up trees, and after kids ran home for dinner, I kept gardening. Until the cardinal grabbed the last sunflower from the birdfeeder, until the dark blue clematis melted from view, until I turned on the porch lights to cover the Anemones in topsoil. 

At the end of a day, I fancied I resembled Catherine moving through the mud-slung moors of Wuthering Heights. Nowadays, I more resemble Quasimodo. Or some Sumo wrestler who has lost the match with the Ebb Tide Roses on a Laurel Canyon patio.  

Let me just say this--waddling downstairs hunched over in the middle of the night is both painful and humiliating. Lucky for me, Husband Number Two and rescue hound Violet sleep through my various squeals, that is because he sleeps like a WASP and Afghan Hounds don’t really care about your problems. 

My sister-in-law, a former dancer, gave me step-by-step instructions on how to straighten up after a back spasm. I printed out the floor exercises. They're useful, but after I do the lion posture (face down on all fours), my magnifying glasses fall off.  So I have to resort to memory, which means skipping postures 5-9. Well, at least I'm upright again.

By late morning, in that gorgeous bird-chirping, flower-nurturing California 11 AM sun, I fetch the two-gallon bougainvillea to be planted alongside the wrought iron gate. I begin digging. It is no fun at all. I hate all holes. From now on, I boycott shovels. Days later the hummingbirds and yellow swallowtail butterflies have found the new plant. 

Hmmm. Maybe just one more bougainvillea?