Gardening and Aging

Wow, that's a lotta candles

I turned 50 this week and feel pretty great about it.  The wonderful thing about 50, as opposed to 35 or 43 or 45, is that you are no longer mourning your lost youth.  It is gone, baby, so you might as well just admit it and enjoy the stage you are at.

Of course, I have been completely shaped at 50 by two decades of furious work with my shovel, and thank God for it!  Here are the ten best things about aging as a gardener:

1. No pressure to be pretty.  My lilies and my children are beautiful, so anybody who thinks all women over 33 should be spending lots of time in hair salons can look at them instead.
2. I feel fantastic.  Clearly, gardening is the best exercise program in the world.  I can do things now that I couldn't do when I was 18 or 30, including run six miles with ease and joy and toss around cases of wine as if they were empty.  It's important for one's morale, while one is wrinkling and losing one's waistline, to feel nonetheless as if one is getting fitter every day! 
3. I probably won't get osteoporosis, which happens to run in my small-boned Irish family.
4. I probably won't get an allergic disease, and it's likely that nothing serious will bother me on the auto-immune front, either.
5. I probably won't get seriously depressed.  Though if late blight destroys all my tomatoes again this August, I'm not promising that I won't become murderously enraged.
6. I will get lots of Vitamin D and always be aglow from the sun.
7. I will not lose my appetite for life until I lose my eagerness for spring, and that is never gonna happen.
8. I will never, ever be bored.  The Seed Saver's Exchange Yearbook lists 13,000 different vegetable varieties. Food writer Harold McGee says that of an estimated 300,000 edible plant species, we only cultivate 2,000. The West may be won, but the vegetable garden is still an endless frontier.
9. I will always have a task so absorbing that all mundane annoyances disappear.
10. I will always have a community, too--the company of other gardeners, who are clearly the wisest and most wonderful people in the world.

Comments

[susan harris]

Well, a belated happy birthday, wishing you several more decades of dirty hands and a strong back!

[Michelle]

Happy birthday Michele! May you have a blight-free year.

[tulipa]

Great photo and wonderful post. May the Birthday Bird of Katroo deposit the appropriate amounts of guano on your garden!

[meme]

And your list will be the same and better at 63. Happy birthday.
Cheers to you and gardening.

[El]

Congrats, and welcome to what one can only be the better half of your centennial!

[susan harris]

Btw, can we assume those perfect fingernails we see in that photo are your winter-only version? And that soon those hands will look as grungy as mine?

[Tibs]

Happy b-day to a fellow march baby. Ditto on all your items. I have way more upper body strength then when a young whipper snapper. Not on the running 6 miles. Gardening has not helped that.

[Joseph Tychonievich]

No pressure to be pretty... and yet you look absolutely beautiful! Happy Birthday!

[Denise]

Happy birthday. Apart from the wise words, I've gotta say that you clean up great.

[Aunt Ida]

Happy Birthday! I turned 60 this week - so I know where you're at - and I'll be gardening until I can't lift a trowel.

[commonweeder]

Great photo and happy birthday! I suspect you will be able to give this post a reprise when you hit 70 which is where I will be this summer - and I concur on every point - except I come from sturdy peasant stock promising no osteoporosis later down the line. When we moved to our house our 83 year old neighbor was still tending a garden - and she was dying of cancer. She said she just lay down in the path when she was weeding and napped until she was ready to continue.

[Lisa, Ontario]

A very Happy Birthday to you! You look fantastic, I have no idea what you are talking about. It is amazing about the running and fitness aspects, and losing my midsection. I am doing a 1/2 marathon in May (I have never been an athlete) and I feel great, but where oh where did my waist go? Very disturbing.

[Gardener on Sherlock Street]

Happy Birthday! You look great! Awesome benefits of gardening.

[Cheryl]

Happy Birthday! Great post, made me laugh! It is great to be this age and love it!

[Cheryl]

Happy Birthday! Great post, made me laugh! It is great to be this age and love it!

[online doctor]

you had a healthy mind and you are a good role model for other people who are struggling with there age.

[Cindy P]

Michele, have a glorious birthday. I love what you wrote...I will not lose my appetite for life until I lose my eagerness for spring, and that is never gonna happen.

That completely describes the joy I felt when I went in the basement yesterday and saw my pepper seeds sprouting.

[Loree / danger garden]

That's a great list...and you do look fabulous! Happy Birthday!

[Ami]

Happy birthday! I love your list!

[Claire Splan]

Happy Birthday! I turn 50 later this year and I can't say that I feel as fabulous about it as you do, but I'm trying...

[Benjamin]

Happy b-day and gardening, but I'll just go ahead and enjoy my 33 thank ya very much, along with trying to reclaim my youth stubbornly despite your sage advice and example.

[Rosella]

Happy Birthday! And you DO look wonderful! And from this 72 year old (well, full disclosure -- 73 in May), gardening does help. The waistline went quite a while ago, but I can still use a shovel, haul bags of chickenpoop, and weed, with the aid of a kneeling stool so that I can get up and not be left in the garden all night till someone finds me.

[Tim Wood]

Happy Birthday! My wife turned 50 on St. Patricks day. You can be sure I send this to her.

[Town Mouse]

That makes me think of Ruth Bancroft, 96 last year and still gardening. http://articles.sfgate.com/2004-09-17/news/17445886_1_private-gardens-succulents-garden-design

Happy birthday! Enjoy the next 50.

[Carol]

Happy Birthday and welcome to the club!