Digging up trouble in the garden

Anhata's picture
Submitted by Anhata on Sat, 02/11/2006 - 7:20pm.

I'm going to have to seriously reconsider my whole approach to the yardwork and gardening. I simply cannot fork and shovel without badly straining the tendons in my arms. This presents a serious problem for my plans for the vegetable garden, turning the compost pile, planting new bulbs and redoing the flower beds, putting in new shrubs and bushes, in other words, just about everything on my yarden "to do" list.

I'm not going to ask DH to help. He does not like to garden and has a very long list of his own projects that he never has time to do. I'm no longer going to ask him to put off doing those to garden for me. It's not fair for me to ask him to take away time from his "really want to do" activites in the garage and yard to do things for me which he doesn't enjoy and does not want to do.

So I'm at a standstil. I'm currently researching the Deep Mulch method to see if I can adapt it to my gardens. The problem with that is the whole hay thing. I'm still looking into it.

Today I went ahead and turned the second compost pile, scooped up what was left of the first one and forked it into a bit of the quarter circle flower bed that has somewhat clayey soil (after forking out some weeds first). I loosened up the soil on the little flowerbed on the other side of the sidewalk where two lavender plants are languishing and sprinkled some wildflower seeds around it. Spread mulch around those two beds, and pretty much called it quits for the day since I was really exhausted and loosing the light.

I came inside and right after washing my hands I took some arninca. I'm going to have to nurse my arms and elbows for another week after this. I can already feel the aches starting in my upper forearm. I'm not in a really great mood. I'm rather bitter about the whole tendonitis thing and how it's affecting what I can and can't do.

Enough bitching for now, dinner and the Olympic Pairs Skating are beconing.

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Becky's picture

you have options

Submitted by Becky on Sat, 02/11/2006 - 7:26pm.

If you can contact a physical therapist, go to a senior center, do a websearch, whatever-- I know for SURE that I've seen arthritic people gardening, using adapted tools. Maybe your DD's rheumatologist would know where to get hold of that kind of catalog.

Kerri's picture

slightly different angle

Submitted by Kerri on Sun, 02/12/2006 - 12:37am.

might be to get someone in cheap - I hesitate to say a gardener, more of a labourer almost - to do the heavy work, at your direction if he's really cheap (!) and leave the lighter work for yourself. Becky's suggestion of specialist tools would still be helpful on top of that though.

Kerri.

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