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Gardening For Senior Citizens
By John Sanderson, Fri Dec 9th
Are you in a wheelchair, and long to dig in the dirt and createflowering beauty and grow far more zucchini than you can giveaway? Or are your knees just starting to age and even thoughyou've loved gardening all your life, you're having more troublegetting up and down and are afraid you'll have to give upgardening altogether? Did you botch the last pruning of yourroses because of the worsening arthritis in your hands? Welcome to the world of the physically challenged gardener. Don't despair. Adapt!
There's plenty of help out there in the form of advice, tools,raised flower beds and other specialized equipment. A Googlesearch of "Disabled gardening tools" leads to 125 websites withspecific helpful adaptive equipment. "Disabled gardening" givesa whopping 873,000 results where you can find advice and"handicapped gardening" yields 111,000. Let those arthriticfingers do your walking! Problem: "The ground is just too far down there!" Think about doing your gardening while sitting on a chair,instead of on the ground, squatting or bending over. The mostobvious solution is to build raised flower beds and scattercontainers throughout your garden area. Buy cheap plasticoutdoor chairs and place one beside each mini-garden so youdon't have to drag or carry when it's time to weed. You can justsit down and enjoy the feel of moist earth beneath your fingersand breathe in the heavenly smell of freshly applied fishemulsion. If you hang a cup holder on the edge of your container, you caneven have the luxury of tea or coffee with your weeds. Maybe thefish emulsion should wait. Don't think about what you've lost now that you can't crawlaround weeding the perennial border; teach your grandchild or aneighborhood kid the joy to be found doing that task ... you'vejust discovered a new adventure in gardening. The good news isthat you may find whole different special areas of your yardwhere you can stick a mini-garden. Get creative. Put a beautiful container near your front door andplant wonderfully scented
flowers to greet your guests ... orperhaps a nice cherry tomato plant they can steal from on theirway to ring your doorbell. Put a waist high herb garden rightoutside your kitchen door and add an area in it for yourfavorite cut flowers. When you're deciding where to locate the raised bed orcontainer, be sure to remember physically demandingpracticalities like dragging a heavy hose to water it. Think andplan a low energy solution for what you'll do with the compostmaterial. Problem: "My painful hands don't have the strength for ..." You can get tools which extend your arms to reach the groundlevel flower bed from a sitting position. Several manufacturersmake specially tools with light weight handles designed to keepthe wrist and hand in a stress-free position and to provide afirmer grip. Small, light rakes, hoes, etc. like this can workwonders. Think ratchet pruner, rachet lopping shears ... let the laws ofphysics give your hands a hand. You'll be amazed when you lookat the tools available. Pull difficult weeds by stepping on alever. Problem: "I get so tired so quickly." Hey, the weeds didn't grow all at once; you don't have to pullthem all at once. Pace yourself. Find ways to make gardeningsomething you do while you sit and drink a cup of tea and listento the birds, rather than a work chore you slave away at for afull afternoon. Pull one weed from the scented garden near yourfront door on your way out and another weed on the way in. Plantparsley in your kitchen door herb garden while your toast istoasting and the coffee is dripping. Buy and plant 3 packs of flowers instead of a whole flat. Take anice walk around your yard, stopping at a differentcontainer for 5 minutes "conversation" with your plants on eachcycle, then go back inside and plop on the recliner. You'll beamazed at how much gets done in these mini-work sessions. Yourheart will love you, too. Remember, one of the nice things about flowers is they don'thave anything to prove. We can all learn a lesson from them. About the author:This article provided courtesy of http://www.floral-shopper.com
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