Thursday, April 19, 2012

Spring Training!

Terry Skillin checks in with this great outlook about gardening in the Spring of 2012!:

These lighter longer days have been great for getting out doors into the garden and to top it off the weather has been amazing.  You all have heard me talk about Simone our big girl Weimaraner; well we now have a full throttle 1 year old little girl Weimaraner Lucy too.  So how does this lead into some kind of gardening talefor these amazing early spring days? Well here it is!

.  Lucy runs by solar power that starts at the earliest crack of dawn and she runs on mostly high until 8:30-9 at night. So still I’m not getting there but stay with me! Until it got warmer out in the morning I would leave my fuzzy sleepers on and shuffle across the floor and turn on the morning news and often before I found my channel I would catch some group of people working out to the newest song and try to perform what looks like a fast pace game of Twister.  Don’t get me wrong I liked Twister and despite what Mike Skillin says about my age I’m sure I could do some of that stuff they’re all doing. But Simone, Lucy and I are taking a more productive approach to a complete workout.  Of course when we first go outside in the morning there is the usual looking for birds and the explosive chase of one of a dozen waiting gray squirrels.  I never come as close to catching them as the girls do but still I’m proud of the effort I put into the chase, Lucy and leash still in hand.   

Once this is completed we start on a few garden chores.  We have our warm up completed and our routine at this time of the season begins with raking.  Mind you I have only about 20 minutes in the morning to do any gardening and if I miss it I think all day about when I’m going to make up the time. So my raking is to  say the  least quite vigorous.  "They" talk about using all the muscle groups; I have no idea what group they are but the first night after my first spring work out the whole group is complaining!  Shoulders, stomach, arms, waist and legs all the way down to my slippers they all have an opinion about their first workout of the season.  So I tell the group if they will drag me out of bed this one more time we’ll do something different and after a little effort they all agree!   

Pruning is up next.  Little light workout for the shoulder and arms maybe a little for the calf and some good stretching for those higher small branches.  This is all pretty therapeutic after the raking and you know the lawn doesn’t really look that bad so again we switch it up. This time it’s getting after some of those early spring weeds before they become comfortable.  Great twisting, bending, and balancing with Lucy leash in one hand and my hand cultivator in the other.  A twist of the head this way and then that to figure out what Simone is chewing on, while all the time keeping Lucy from taking away whatever Simone is chewing.  We are working on our sharing skills right now.  I would never attempt this while pruning because if I cut myself again my wife  Erlene says she is going to take my pruners away, again. Anyway this is our "Spring Training Camp", outdoors in the yard working up a sweat keeping in shape enjoying everything , getting the cobwebs out of my head and never setting a foot or hand on my Twister game sheet!


Terry Skillin
Skillin's Greenhouses
April 19, 2012

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