Gardening is a dainty activity?

Just found this on an old Email:

"Flower Power: Gardening Helps Prevent Osteoporosis Lori Turner, associate professor of health sciences at the University of Arkansas, did a study of 3,310 women ages 50 and older and found that gardening was more effective at protecting against osteoporosis than jogging, swimming, walking or aerobics. Part of it has to do with weight bearing exercise being the most important type of exercise for maintaining bone density. But Turner said, "We hadn't expected yard work to be significant," Turner says, "It's taken for such a dainty activity. But there's a lot of weight-bearing motion going on in the garden, digging holes, pulling weeds, pushing a lawn mower."


Dainty activity?!!


What's your opinion?


My Southold friend, Lynn, worked long hard hours to create the beauty she has and I doubt she'd think of the work as "dainty" - neither do I.

Dainty???? I think not! I feel like a mule most days with dragging hoses, watering cans, tools and assorted other activities. Plus, there is nothing delicate about my appearance while doing the aforementioned!

I doubt any of us could qualify for a magazine cover at the end of a long hard day unless it was Compost Cuties.

Compost Cuties! I like that!

Oh....me too, Pirl.....add me to the list of Pack horses and Mules! But this year I promise myself I am going to get knee pads. I am sick and tired of raw knees with dirt still in the wrinkles.

When I'm outdoors I look horrible. Dirty clothes, I'm always covered in dirt. When my husband has customers come and he's not here, I just cringe.

Lynn looks great there. Picture the pretty pink tee with dirt all over the top, and wet from the waist down to the knees of those grey sweats, and that's me.

And this year when I get my no see um netting hood on, watch out.

And dainty, hardly. I have about 5 hoses all hooked together that I drag all over the place to hook to water towers. Then moving all the mulch and compost around. I also have a unique way of dividing siberian irises that is very dainty. I dig up the whole clump and then hold it by the leaves and pound it on the ground about 10 times to get the dirt off. Then I put a shovel into it, and jump on the shovel. Russ loves watching me pound the dirt off those clumps. Probably happy I'm not doing it to him.

We should all have our photos taken and make a calendar for 2010.

I hire Jose to do all of the chainsaw work and anything that might involve jumping on shovels, but I do all of the rest myself.

I couldn't qualify for a magazine cover even at the start of the day, but I never wear pants. I garden in skirts and sweaters in winter and sundresses in summer. I do keep a supply of skorts for the days I might have to assume unladylike postures.

I do have classic sandy loam, though, so I suspect my gardening chores are much easier than they would be in other locations. I can dig a hole for a 5-gallon plant in a minute or two, and I can separate huge clumps of Siberian irises with my hands because they're not heavy with dirt. I have nine hose connections on my half-acre, so I never have to drag hoses very far, and I always wear gloves, so my hands are always clean. My knees are the only part of me that gets dirty, as I mentioned in another thread in this forum.

Why am I suddenly hearing "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar" playing in the background ? LOL

I have always been amazed at the gardens I see on this site that were single handedly made and maintained by women !

Not a chance.

Isn't it funny to have dirt in the knee wrinkles, Sharon. At my old house the dirt had a lot of small stones, and I always looked like I wiped out on my bike in the cinders.

Don't hate me for this, but my dirt now is sooooo soft, sandy, and feels so good on the knees. And butt, stomach, or wherever I end up.

Isn't sandy loam wonderful, Zuzu? Funny we both have it on opposite ends of the continent.

At the moment my dirt is covered in ice, but ahhhh tomorrow.....we will have 60 degrees, and beneath the mass of lincoln logs I will find dirt, I am sure it is still there. And all the new daylilies that I got from my dear Pirlie. I am so so so anxious for summer.

And roses...oh, Zu, do roses survive ice storms?

Lord, how would I know, Sharon? I've been living in zone 9 since 1953.

If roses are own root, not grafted, absolutely no problem. If they are grafted chances are no problem, either.

We get ice storms here, and it never really hurts any of the shrubs. It might trim them some, but doesn't kill them.

I've been amazed at shrubs that looked like they were bent right to the ground, and popped right back up. Too bad all the trees aren't so resilient.

Zu, you know everything about roses. Everything.
I have never been in an ice storm either. And I would never wish it on my worst enemy. Well...I'll have to think about that.

But in a couple of months, I guess I will know about roses and ice.

You know, I had a magnolia, started it from seed a few years ago, and it was firmly embedded in ice for 5 days, suddenly up it popped and looks surprisingly healthy. Same with a holly that the birds planted beside my deck. It was frozen to the trellis that is attached to my gardening bench. Now it is standing tall and straight. I would not have thought they would ever be upright again.

Are you near Buffalo, Polly? I remember flying into Buffalo one year in the middle of an ice storm. It was April, and I had just spent a week in New Orleans and another week in Washington, DC, so I was wearing a sundress and sandals when I arrived. Big mistake!

We're about 150 miles from Buffalo. About 50 miles east of Rochester about 2 miles from Lake Ontario. Hot summers, cold winters, short springs, beautiful falls.

How did you get my picture?
I garden through osteo, had two hips replaced( one of them twice because gardening dislocated the first one three times)
Dainty? NOOOOOT

Funny, Jo Ann!

The one guarantee I feel many of us have is that the worse we look the more often people will just drop in to visit. One look should tell them we're busy but somehow it doesn't work out that way.

Without Clorox I'd never be clean. I keep a big jug in the bathtub - not decorative but functional.

two showers a day in garden season.
I try not to appear in public.

gardening is to dainty as elephant is to ballerina.

2 showers a day here too Jo Ann. The right knee never gets completely clean.

good one, venu ! LOL

2 showers a day here too. I just can't do the clorox, though.

how do you think pirl stays a blonde? LOL

JD, good grief.

i just crawl out of bed and head outside with my pjs and coffee . i do end up taking 2 showers most days . because i think im gonna do other things and get ready for the day and end up out there . i dont know how many times i handed someone money a had dirt caked under my nails. who ever said it was dainty probably lived in an apartment

Sharran..December 2007 we had an extremely bad ice storm. I do not have a lot of roses, but all came thru it and grew & bloomed very well last summer.

Greta

Good to know, Greta.
I went outside and checked today. The roses looked good, and I can see some new leaves forming. I don't think there is any damage at all. It was about 65 or so and most of the time the sun was shining, except for the lincoln logs strewn about, things are perking up. Me, too.

And I got my knees muddy.

I'm very attached to my Clorox and it's one thing we are not allowed to even come close to running out of or I know I can't garden.

Clorox causes me breathing problems, otherwise I would probably love it, too.

Sharon, so you haven't blamed the ice storm on me yet?

Polly,
What ice storm? That little thing last week???

(I have a short attention span.)

LOL !

I vote for the Compost Cuties pinup calendar, dirty knee wrinkles and all. When people see the garden for the first time they always ask who made the raised beds, dug the pond, etc. as if a "physically mature" female could not do that. Just me, my shovel and a garden cart folks. Anyway, aren't all the high priced beauty product commercials lately saying something about "bare minerals"?? I have that all of the time. LOL

We need to explore the Compost Cuties concept...this could be a winner.
Phyllis Diller used to say she had been the centerfold for Field and Stream Magazine.

We already have one calender why not two?? Where is VictorGardener when you need him...... :^)

Sure! The more the merrier!

We can have a female and a male version.

Alternate months w/ women /men.Red Chick can take the photos.

It could be a very popular calendar for women if the men in the photos were washing dishes, doing laundry, mopping the floor, scrubbing toilets, polishing windows, etc. while the women were photographed lounging by the pool with young handsome, well built hunks served us the drink of our choice.

Sounds like a plan!