Pam's Gym or Glover's Gulag?

We all know regular exercise is important. But some of us just don’t like it.

My friends go to the gym and work out on treadmills, weight machines, and stationary bikes. I have chosen an at-home method. I garden. 

Since I need my husband's help, he says he has a free membership at Pam’s Gym.

In the spring season there is lots of shovel and rake work, good upper body training. That moves seamlessly into high gear weeding and mulching--all that standing and stooping is good for legs. We really gear up in the summer when we "work out" for three to four hours a day. 

Ours is not a city lot smaller than a tennis court. We have two acres. It's big enough for a baseball diamond. And don't think weed eaters, riding lawn mowers, mini-tractors and gas-powered hedge trimmers. We do things the hard way around here.  

My work crew inside and out.

Last September we dug up over 100 day lilies from a plot that had turned ugly. By the time we hoed, raked, seeded for grass and covered it with straw my hubbie claimed he was forced labor in the Glover Gulag.

Our goal isn't a 10K run or tennis match. Unlike the Scottish games where work has evolved into sport--like throwing hammers, rocks, and logs, gardening doesn't have competitions for straightest rows planted, or fastest pea-picking. Even if there were dirt work-out contests, say distributing mulch, I’d lose to my friend Sue who can shovel, tote, and spread nine scoops of mulch in a week-end. 

I may not have an opportunity to come in first (or second or third)--no ribbons, no little gold trophies. But I win big when I cook up fresh veggies grown and harvested by me and my one-man chain gang.

My Friend, Mma Ramotswe

I have a friend in Botswana named Mma Ramotswe. Fifteen years ago Alexander McCall Smith introduced us and  we became immediate friends. Over tea--she prefers red bush tea to my English breakfast--she's shown me how to handle delicate situations. She visited me while I was stuck in the hospital, and even there she kept me chuckling.  

On one visit "it was time for a further cup of tea and the conversation shifted to the subject of husbands, on which [we] both declared [ourselves] to be most fortunate." 

In the most current book, The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon an acquaintance told her about a local course for the Modern Husband.  "'It is very good. I hear they teach men how to cook, or at least to think about cooking.' 

Mma Ramotswe's attention was immediately engaged." 




Mine, too. My husband is quite modern. He cleans. He does all of the grocery shopping. In a pinch he does laundry. And after years of negotiating, he cooks. 


I recently walked into the kitchen in the middle of his dinner preparations.  Every cupboard door he opened stayed open. The drawers waited for the utensils and spices to go back into their places. Eight linear feet of counter were covered with ingredients. 

If she had seen it, I can imagine my friend would have said, "Mma Glover, if he chops, mixes, and cooks, he is a thoroughly modern man. Surely you can close the cupboards."

As usual, you're right, Mma Ramotswe.