Last week, one of the chaplains at work came into the office and told me about a lady he's known at a nursing home he used to preach at on Sundays. In her late eighties, this woman went to be with her Savior about a week earlier. Much more an old maid than I often think I am, just days before she died she informed the directors of the nursing home:

"No man ever asked me out, and so no man is going to carry me out."

Interpretation: she wanted women pallbearers.

Like most "old maids", I imagine, most days I can give or take men. But for the past two weeks, it would have been great to have one around. For do you know how heavy bags of 3-cubic feet of mulch are? I'm not exactly sure myself, but they're heavy enough. I lugged six of them out of the back of my car and into the backyard. Today, I dumped three of them into a wheelbarrow (one at a time, I promise) and pushed it around the yard mulching the flowerbeds.

But, as it seems having a man around isn't in my near future, I guess I need to go for the next-best thing if the gardening around here continues like this: take up weight lifting.