I am thinking about the concept of not trying to do it all myself. I no longer wash my van because of my shoulder problems. Likewise, pruning is really difficult when it involves wide shoulder motion. For now Jerry is doing all that, and 'little tree', my purple potato vine standard, shows the quality of his work. It hasn't looked so well shaped in years. But I imagine it will at some point need to go. We are cutting back the fruit trees to a height where we can pick from the ground, and as I hopefully add more they will be the five foot dwarfs.
Other than pruning, the garden work that is the most difficult is dealing with roots. Especially in the case of seasonal annuals I do not want to be digging out tenacious roots such as those on rudbeckia and sunflowers and the annual coreopsis. I prefer plants like poppies that can be simply plucked from the ground. So the plants that require routine digging are becoming fewer as I find more congenial alternatives.
So I think for the garden there are ways to minimize labor to fit what we can do, and continue to do it all ourselves.
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