Went

The weather has finally returned to more typical April fare, but we've had two rather lengthy warm spells, much more May-like than April-like. It was greatly appreciated while it lasted.

Under Sue's direction, we got ourselves out to do a bit of garden work on both days this past weekend — not for long on either morning. Basically, we raked up lingering leaves and debris. As light as the work was, I am afraid that I must report that I found it to be quite a slog. Where oh where did my energy go?

I am thinking of how about 25 years ago, it was like I woke up one morning and decided that I needed to plant a perennial garden. It was rather odd because I had never been interested in gardening and knew nothing about flowers. I did purchase a helpful book or three and took an unhelpful course at the community college. To be fair, said course may have been helpful if I had not already read up on the subject.

Back then, I removed sod and double dug, at least for the first part of the garden. By double digging I mean that after digging up the topsoil, I then removed a layer of the hard clay in the subsoil. I amended both layers with bags of good soil: triple mix, if memory serves.

The point that I am getting to in my roundabout way is that twenty-five years ago, I did all of this without much a problem.

This year, I found myself dragging around with effort. Just doing light raking for maybe an hour was a real drag. I felt very sluggish on both mornings.

My get-and-go has done got up and went. If I knew whence it went, I might go and retrieve it. Then again, perhaps not, because it it were anywhere beyond arm's reach, I probably wouldn't be able to summon up the energy to snatch my energy back.