I like weeding. Nuts, I know. To me, weeds are my garden’s post-menopausal chin whiskers and must be plucked before causing public disgrace. Keeping a well-tended garden is a civic responsibility. My plants and the bees and butterflies they attract make me happy, and a lot of time, sweat and big bucks went into planning, planting and taking care of my garden. I’m not letting any old weeds take away that beauty and the joy it brings. 

This gardening season, I went on my fitness tracker and checked how many calories low‑, medium- and high-intensity garden work burns. Hundreds of calories. Yippee! And weeding gets my body moving in ways I do not move at the gym or at any other time in my day. So, I’m exercising without thinking about the exercising, targeting new muscle groups, and I’m saved from doing squats and lunges. I loathe them. Over two or three hours of stretching, bending, squatting, digging under and yanking out some of Mother Nature’s botanical terrorists, I rack-up a few hundred of both exercises without thinking. And I do not huff and puff and moan that I can’t do another squat. I’m on a mission to get those weeds, and if in the process of prettying up my garden, I’m prettying up me, ensuring continued flexibility in my dotage and maybe buffing up to a trendy bubble butt, that’s an added bonus.