Today I feel 10 years younger than I did last fall.

All that fall planting made my back ache; the raking gave me blisters, my bunions throbbed even as I slept. When my husband saw me struggle to transplant a large hydrangea, he said; “gardening isn’t for sissies.” No kidding. It took me three hours just to dig that shrub up and another hour to dig it in to its new location.

So I decided to make filling the birdfeeders that dangle from a tall pole into a stretching exercise. I pulled a muscle in my shoulder.

I dreamed up a 40-foot privacy hedge that I was going to plant with evergreens, but my body would not cooperate. My imagination just kept inventing projects that my body could not fulfill. Wasn’t that a country and western song, “My mind’s making promises my body just can’t keep?” I would sing more of it, but I’ve forgotten the rest of the words. The memory goes right after the back.

And my attention span . . .

Dragging leaves to my compost pile used to be rewarding. But I think I need to harness more than my own horsepower. My pride has resisted buying those noisy leaf blowers in favor of a good old-fashioned rake, but maybe I should rethink that decision before I break down. Totally.

And last fall I never seemed to have enough gas – I had to be fed every hour. My husband saw me flagging and he ran out with food and water. He would have helped with the heavy lifting, but he was at physical therapy three times a week.

Now ’tis the season for snow. But shoveling causes spasms in my piriformis – that muscle in the butt that runs from the low spine to the femur. Mine are tight, says my physical therapist. How did that happen? While everything else was getting loose, my piriformis got tight? But so far this winter we’ve mainly had rain. Lots of it. I bought a snow blower anyway, and the gas tank is topped off and it’s ready.

Still, for all the pulling, aching, throbbing and spasms, I know that to grow old in a garden that I have made…this is a privilege.