I FLIP for Spring -- literally

I LOVE working in my yard -- especially all the stuff that leads up to the vegetable garden and summer flower beds. I've spent several days the last few weeks cleaning out my flower beds, raking and trimming debris leftover from fall, and fixing some bare spots in the lawn. My seedlings are growing indoors and I've got several more yard improvement projects planned.

Today I went with my father-in-law to buy a truckload of compost to put in my garden before it gets tilled tomorrow. I've been looking forward to this all week because I love the physical labor involved and I certainly need the exercise. I even had to be bossy with my father-in-law and insist that he let me push the wheelbarrow loads (uphill all the way back) to the garden -- mostly because I wanted the exercise for myself, but also because I wanted to make sure they got dumped where I wanted them.

With one wheelbarrow load to go, I was casually walking back to the front yard with the empty wheelbarrow (downhill), when all of a sudden the axle hit a dent in the grass and stuck there, sending me flying like a rag doll as the downhill momentum of the rotating wheelbarrow pulled me down on top of it. If you're trying to visualize: the wheel stayed in one place and the handles kept moving, with my hands still attached to them. It happened so suddenly that I couldn't even throw myself to the side to keep from landing on top of it. I lay there to assess whether I was still alive, then heaved myself onto the ground where I lamely rolled back and forth on the lawn trying to deal with the pain. Nothing seemed to be more than bruised, so I shook it off, turned the wheelbarrow back over, and finished pushing the wheelbarrow back to the front, where I started getting dizzy and cloudy and sat down again to rest. My father-in-law saw me laying in the grass and commented that I was working too hard, unaware that I wasn't laying there because I was tired, but because I had just tried to kill myself.

So, needless to say, it sort of put a damper on my yard work for the day. I finished up what needed to be done in the garden and then left the rest for tomorrow. That's what I was going to do anyway, but my clumsy mishap sort of sucked the joy out of the work I had done! Conveniently, the cross bars underneath the wheelbarrow were perfect landing spots for my shins and hips. I'm pretty bruised. What a dork. I wonder how many of the 7 neighbors who have views into my backyard caught the scene! Too bad there's no picture to share!