gardening

i love to garden... i love digging in the dirt and getting my hands dirty... no i'm not a use gloves kind of woman... can't feel what i'm doing with gloves on... makes for messy manicures and more cuts and stuff on my hands but still my gardening method of choice... i have the hands of a worker and can't do anything about that not that i would want to anyway...
so i weeded that garden that i have been working on for months... i have to work in moderation, which is not easy to get used to but necessary for my pain management... though i have found a few things that help me not hurt myself as much and am adding to my methods daily... yeah me...
on thing i use is a scooter... it's this low padded seat on wheels for gardening... keeps me off my knees and actually does take some of the stress off my lower back and hips which is where most of my problems are anyway...
i also have problems with the sun... medications make it unsafe for me to be in direct sun for long periods of time so i created portable shade... my neighbors laugh at me and ask if i'm a peanut vendor... but hey... at least i don't burn... and i can work outside longer cause the blazing florida heat isn't baking me...
what i did was take one of those rubbermaid gardening carts... that i found at a yardsale for $20.00... great price btw... and put my base from my deck umbrella on the front platform of it for a counter balance and then took the pole that goes into it and mounted it to the front of the cart with duct tape... lol... 1002 uses... lol now when i go outside to work i just open up my really big deck umbrella and pop it into the pole attached to the cart and i have my portable shade on wheels as well as all the spots to carry my various gardening tools and stuff...
i may look silly out there under my umbrella but my gardens and myself definitely benefit... lol
so my front garden... most of the stuff is in small to medium pots... all my landscape cloth is down and now i'm waiting for rocks from my dad... (we don't have rocks in florida and if you want them you either have to buy them... not or you have to cart them down from other states... which is what dad did over the course of over 5 years and now he has too many and is going to share with his only daughter... lol).
also i have to buy a few bags of mulch... i'm not sure what kind i want... leaning towards the recycled tires... they last longer and don't float away with the rains... if we ever get any... lol
once that's down my pots will have some insulation from the hot sun, since my garden is south facing and my little oak tree i planted 2 years ago doesn't quite throw enough shade as of yet... lol
once i get this garden done, hopefully before i head north in a month, my next project when i return is to extend a narrow garden under my craft room window so that i can move my bird feeder poles out front and make that all pretty and nice...
so that's it for this blog... i'll catch you again tomorrow... hopefully...