I often spend hours weeding my garden. Neither my front yard or the back yard can seriously be considered a garden but there are weeds in both. The most frugal thing I did was give up my lawn mower. Then I let the back yard go "wild" as in acquiring bushes and flowers that would come up without reseeding or replanting year after year. The most tenacious plants were the grasses I tried to replace. Those are mostly what I weed.

But the activity is what makes my gardening frugal. Bending, stretching, and lifting cost me less in my back yard than when done at a health club. My yard is handy. I can go out any time and bend, stretch, and lift without buying gasoline and putting wear and tear on my automobile.

My yard is private. I can dress as casually as I please without concern about having clean underwear visible if I'm in an accident. Haven't you heard mothers cautioning kids to put on clean underwear just in case? Well, there will be no automobile accidents in my back yard, although my neighbor wonders about something breaking if I should fall from the trees I often prune.

My yard is rampant with fresh air and sunshine, the best kind for healthy lungs and hearts and I like that most of all. So I have to clean dirt from under fingernails, that's just another excuse to jump in the shower and sing!.