Day 145

Most people have one or two ways that they relieve stress and/or just turn their mind off. Some like to pop those bubbles on packaging wrap. Others squeeze stress balls or do yoga. Before going to bed and in the winter time, I play Spider Solitaire on my I pad to turn my brain off, many times falling asleep cuddling my I pad instead of my husband...

But once it gets warm out, I pull weeds.

Yes, I also use Round-up at times, but there's just something about the manual labor of pulling weeds that I actually enjoy. It's something that I can put my whole mind and body into and pretty much zone out, digging and pulling with fervor. I use a huge screwdriver to help with the bigger ones with roots, a trick I learned accidentally years ago when I couldn't find the #$%*ing expensive weed puller tool I had bought.

And there's such satisfaction in the immediate difference pulling weeds makes. The garden goes from overgrown and unruly to  neat and orderly. It's a great upper body workout too, as well as a core and back strengthener- an afternoon pulling weeds will remind you of muscles you forgot you had the next morning!

So today's picture represents finding something that allows you to just turn it off for awhile. I planted some annuals as I went along today, which gave me twice the satisfaction as weed pulling alone. The only downside to this evening's session was that a HUGE (like as big as my head it seemed) spider crawled out of the hole I had just dug for a petunia- I jumped back and screamed like a little girl. I decided that was a sign that I should pack it in for the night. So much for stress relief...oh well. There are plenty more weeds to pull up tomorrow :).