The perils of gardening

File this under "things that could only happen to me." 

I hurt myself gardening. 



Yes, you read that right.  Gardening.  That thing that old women do.  That kids do.  That Michelle Obama does.

You're probably thinking that it's easy to hurt yourself gardening. You could drop a shovel on your foot or swing a trowel into your leg or cut your arm pulling weeds or something.  

That's not at all what happened to me.  Heck, I'd probably be happy to brag about it if that's what happened to me.

Maybe this is why I live in an apartment in a decidedly urban environment with no plants. (I tried once.  They died. Womp womp.)  And, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that my last attempt at gardening, when I was maybe five, yielded two puny carrots and a tomato or two. 

Clearly, I do not have a green thumb and should stay far away from gardens. 

But, I felt like doing something good and being outside while doing it, so I signed up for a park cleanup last weekend. When I arrived, I found out that we'd be weeding and planting bulbs.  Both of these things sounded relatively easy, and I was pretty sure that they wouldn't give us something to do that we could majorly screw up, and it was a gorgeous fall day right on the water, so I was excited to get started. 

One of the volunteers who had clearly done this many times before gave me a quick run down of what I needed to do. (Dig down to get the weeds by the roots.  Don't pull the stuff that's not actually a weed.  Throw weeds in the garbage bag. Repeat.) I grabbed what looked like a flat hand shovel (which apparently is called a Cape Cod weeder), he handed  me a pad to kneel on and a trash bag to throw the weeds in, and sent me on my way.  

Turns out, those weeds really wanted to be in the ground. It took a lot of digging and pulling to get them out, and the whole time I was thinking that it was a really good workout. Eventually, as weeds started to get cleared, I moved around to different parts of the garden.  

It's at this point that I decided the little kneeling pad was too much of a pain to schlep around.  I also, for some reason, decided that it was a bad idea just to kneel in the mulch.  Which is strange, because I have no aversion at all to getting a bit dirty. 

So, my solution was to just squat the whole time.  More specifically, to squat with my butt resting on my ankles and my knees fully bent (kind of like these guys).  I did this as I weeded, and as I spread peat moss, and as I planted bulbs. I did this for probably about 2.5 to 3 hours, all in.

This was a really bad idea. 

After my volunteer project was over, I went home and got showered up and headed to a six year old birthday party.  I didn't stretch or anything because, well, it was only gardening. 

This was also a really bad idea. 

After sitting in the car for about a half hour on the way to my in-laws' to drop the dog off, my knees started to feel a little bit tight, especially my left one.  When I got out of the car and started walking, it felt like my knees were going to buckle if I made any sudden movements.  And it was really difficult to bend them.  But they weren't swollen at all.  It just felt like the muscles responsible for stabilizing and bending them didn't want to work together. 

So, I took a few Advil and carried on with my day.  

Back into the car for an hour ride to the party.  Sitting for most of the three hours at the party.  Back into the car for another hour ride to pick the dog up. 

As the night wore on, my knees started to feel worse.  To the point where it was incredibly uncomfortable to keep them in one position for a long time.  And I almost totally face planted when I got up to get more sushi. I hobbled into my in-laws' house at the end of the night and feebly flopped on the couch, attempting to stretch whatever it was that was bothering me, to no avail. 

So, I took more Advil and we headed home.

By the time we got back to our apartment 45 minutes later, I was walking like Frankenstein's monster - stiff legged and incredibly slow.  It honestly took me about five minutes to get my boots off and change out of my jeans into sweats. 

I decided to get down on the floor to stretch and foam roll.  Only after I made it down did I wonder how the hell I was going to get back up. (The answer: very slowly.  I had to use my hands to physically bend my knees.) 

As my final course of treatment for the night, I hauled myself onto the couch, strapped an ice pack on to each knee, and used The Stick.  I went to bed resigned to the fact that I was going to be in pain and out of commission for at least a few days. 

You can imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning able to walk (almost) totally normally again.  Sure, my knees still felt a little unstable and I made sure to take it easy, but holy wow!  I almost wondered if the previous day had been all in my head.  By the next day, it was like nothing had ever been wrong. 

And I have no idea what actually happened.  Or what I did to fix it.  Or really how to avoid it in the future.

So, what's the moral of this story?  I don't know that there really is one.  Maybe listen to little old women who know what they're doing when it comes to gardening and kneel or sit?  Or that ice, Advil, The Stick and a good night's sleep can cure most ailments? Or that gardening is actually a lot of work and shouldn't be scoffed at?

I do know one thing.  Next time I garden, I'll be sure to actually kneel down.  No more squatting for hours.  I'm too old for this shit.