Friday, May 18, 2012

Nellie and Me

It's getting to be THAT time of year.

Gardening!

The other day our back neighbor got out his rototiller and tilled up his sizable garden. This yearly event is my "Heads up, Ruth! You need to get Mike on this!"

But this year...

I decided to haul out Nellie by myself.  After hefting and grunting some packages of roofing shingles aside, I managed to wheel her out.

Since there is not one cloud in the sky, I whipped on a bathing-suit-approved cami (to minimize bad strap tans), shoved on my tall rubber boots and headed out to the garden. :)

Who is Nellie, you ask?!

Well, meet Nellie!

She got her name from the first time Mike brought her home as a cast-off ancient piece of machinery with which he is eternally fascinated.

He decided to start her up (after checking her fluids and such...) and give her a spin since it was post-gardening season and my garden needed some attention before winter.

Well, he put her in forward and she jerked with such momentum he almost let go!

Hence her full name, "Whoa, Nellie!!"

For those of you wondering... yes, I did double over in laughter at the sight of my 6 ft 6 in husband trying to control his unruly machine.

My husband can heft 30 80lb bags of Quikcrete and then say how his body doesn't like it. I haul far less than that and I'm not singing happy songs. So I wasn't sure I could handle Nellie.

But my reasoning was as follows... "How hard could it be?!"

I did, however, call Mike to check if there were any special operating instructions I needed to know. He said told me what to do and also added that he might call one of the neighbors to video me. I told him he was very funny.

After a few yanks, I got her going and even managed to hang on! The test came when 5ish minutes had passed and my upper arms felt like wet noodles. I decided that I was gonna beat this... so I finished and wow did that feel good!

I literally felt like I had climbed a mountain or something. I'd never before started an old piece of machinery, I'd never tilled my garden, and I'd never felt so good about finishing a physically hard job!! It was almost like the feeling of crossing the finish line of a 5k race. Glorious!

I could wax eloquently about how trying new things is good and how we need to tackle jobs we think we can't do and how good it is to finish said jobs... but I won't. :)

Even if it's hard work, keep on dancing!

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