Knackered!

1 Oct, 2023 by Barry 9 Comments

At 74 I’m clearly not as young as I used to be. A little bit of light exercise I thought.

I had assembled a raised vegetable garden in our back yard so that the wife and I don’t have to get down on our knees to manage the gardening. We bought fourteen bags of garden mix to fill it. These were delivered on Friday and stacked on the parking area in front of our basement-garage for me to transport to the back of our section (NZ term for “lot” or “property”) at my leisure. Additionally there were two fruit trees plus large wooden barrels to contain them to be moved to the rear of the section. Saturday was rain, so today was the day.

Our section is not level and slopes up about 9 metres (29 ft) from front to back. From the road to the front of the house the land rises about 5 metres, but has been partially excavated in front of the house to form a parking area and access to the three garages under the house. On each side of the parking area there is a steep loop-back path that enables access to the main part of the house climbing 3.5 m (11 ft) in 10 m (33 ft) before climbing gently about another 60 cm (2 ft) to the back door, a distance of about 20 m (66 ft). From there you take some steps rising about a metre (3 ft) to a patio area, then after crossing the patio, approximately 4 m (13 ft) you take some more steps to the (mostly) level ground a metre (3 ft) higher, where the raised vegetable garden is situated. In total, that’s a rise of around 6 m (20 ft) over a distance of 40 m (130 ft) from stacked bags to vegetable garden.

Now that I’ve laid out the scene, there’s one more important bit of information you need to know. The bags are 40 litres each and weigh between 25 kg (55 lb) and 30 kg (66 lb) depending on moisture content, so not exactly featherweight. My intention was to carry the fruit tress and barrels then all the bags of garden mix.

The two barrels were heavier than I thought, but I managed to lift both together and carry them to the back, and then the two trees (one in each hand) without raising a sweat. The slightly limp and very heavy bags of garden mix were a different story! I ruptured two discs in my lower back when I was a teenager by lifting a very heavy object incorrectly, learning the hard way not to use my back as a crane. I’ve since learnt to keep my body upright and use my legs to get from a squatting position to a standing position. But pressing an additional 25 – 30 kg above my own weight proved to be stretching the limits of my 74 year old legs. By the time I had carried six bags, my legs felt like jelly and I knew I didn’t have the strength to lift, let alone carry another bag. It’s a cold, windy, un-spring-like October afternoon, but the exercise left me saturated in perspiration. I don’t think I’ve felt so exhausted for more than a decade.

So there’s another eight bags than need to be moved to the back of the section. Any takers? There’s a twelve-pack of beer when its completed.