Heather and I waived our early morning yoga session yesterday morning in favour of a recovery program in the garden.
That is, we were recovering from a very pleasant dinner at our neighbours’: champagne, appetisers, mains, sweets and that odd dessert wine that I believe is related to botox (called “noble rot wine”).
So, armed with mattock, shovels, trowels and mallet, Heather and I installed edging in the Hollingworth’s garden. Heather knew because she’d done this job in another part of our garden how hard it was going to be. The ground is hard, rocky, and clay-ey in parts. Me, I was more naive and thought we could do all the gardens in a morning session. As it was, 1.5 hrs. did us in.
Fortunately, the weights work-out for shoulders and arms that I’ve been committed to for many weeks saved me from any rotator cuff or brachialis tears – common to us older garden ingenues. I did discover that swinging a pick takes a whole new set of hip muscles than doing ardha chandrasana, adho mukha svanasana or even running up sand dunes at Mitchells Island Beach.
There’s something so cleansing about working in the garden, especially in this build-up  to the summer solstice. You almost can’t take a wrong step because Nature is side-by-side and even running ahead. What could be better than turning dirt over, smelling it, seeing scurrying worms, glowing with sweat, imagining the future you are building, and best of all, doing it communally?
It has some of the same elements of doing yoga practice and, like yoga, is a great antidote for the excesses of the holiday season.