Ladies don’t sweat, they perspire, said my grandmother. In the garden, I sweat. I suppose all the “lady” gardeners I know and respect for their consummate horticultural knowledge and artistic eye also sweat, at least while in the garden. How could it not be so? Those who dabble in the warming dirt in the spring and venture out again in the fall with a rake are hardly gardeners. The contagion known as obsessive gardening (my kind) has the gardener out in all weather, including those Double-H Dog Days, of summer when heat and humidity prevail. Pacing oneself (some water, a rest, a nap?) is essential in July and August but so is sweating. It takes 15 minutes of feeling disgusting in my case before the joy of medicinal sweating out the body’s bad stuff (last night’s martini?) becomes the focus. How good – no, how really great! – this is. I partake of this beneficial regimen without the mindless horrors of being in a gym, sweating indoors amongst all those other bored souls. This mental agility of being able to convince yourself that the difficult thing you are doing is not only good for you (no pain no gain, your puritan DNA) but also fun, has taken me years to develop. Bending down, squatting, kneeling, heavy lifting, extra walking to retrieve a lost tool back in the shed, yet another load of debris off to the far end of the garden…. These tiresome chores (wasn’t there someone else to do these loathsome duties?) for years tested my enduring interest in my passion for my garden. Somehow, a mental metamorphosis swept those thoughts away. If I dared to keep my iPhone in my pocket (I don’t, finding out the hard way it doesn’t happily mix with dirt), I would chart my daily “steps” with the certain-to-be-true news that I am clocking more miles gardening than my winter walks along city sidewalks. Perhaps this mental mind game is just rationalizing – but what a beneficial psychological state this is. I now find my days in the sweltering garden more than tolerable, even happily anticipated. And as I get older, inexplicably, I seem to have more energy than 20 years ago. A good sweat is part of it, I am convinced. Ever weigh yourself after a good day of sweaty gardening in August? The scales never seemed sweeter. After all, who was it who said “Creativity is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”?