My hamstrings strain and my legs quiver.

Fingers unused to grasping and wrapping and pulling lose their strength, leaving their quarry in the ground.

The sun beats down on my back, the warmth giving only a little relief to the aches that have dully rested around my hips and up through to my shoulders and neck.

It’s not how I had planned to spend my long weekend but, once again, I found myself at the mercy of my annual urge to finally get out and garden.

Were you with me?

Did you make the most of the spring weather that Adelaide does so well?

No doubt most of you are well on your way to preparing and sowing what is needed for the greenery to live past the coming summer heat.

Your impeccably prepared soil is bursting with nutrients and filled with a roiling army of worms and bugs ready to push nature along.

You’ve already got the right things sprouting in the right places, the seedlings in long ago, making the most of our recent rains and already softening and cooling the brick walls and pavements.

Your gardening tools are shiny and you store them in a way that would make a crime scene Investigator proud: every implement hung in its ordained spot.

To you all, I bow in deference, and, as I do every year, I will try my best to disguise the jealousy as admiration of your homegrown flowers and your freshly picked veggies.

You see, I live in the gardening equivalent of the Sahara.

It’s a world of the haphazard, without consistency, without knowledge and, if I’m honest, without much hope.

Our garden is the domain of the hardy: agaves, Kikuyu and flowering weeds that, if you squint, can almost pass as something you’d put in a vase.

In the (wrong) corner is an accidental fig courtesy of an errant bird. Despite it interrupting the kid’s soccer goal, I’m too scared to touch it in case my brown fingers rub off and its life is ended before it has a chance to bear fruit.

I bribed the kids to help and, after a brief spout of enthusiasm, their whinges had to be drowned out by the mower and the noise of the rake as it finally scraped the autumnal leaves off the path.

Courtesy of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon of frequency illusion, everywhere I go now, all I can see is weeds.

The next day I actually found myself weeding our local park during a break in a neighbourhood baseball game.

I wish I was joking.

So did my teammates.

Ninety per cent of us have a private home garden and it’s said that just six hours of being in it a week could produce all the vegetable and fruit needs for an average family.

With that said, what I haven’t been able to confirm is whether that’s six Costa Georgiadis hours, or six of mine.

I have a sneaky suspicion I’d need to put in 20.

Hippocrates, the man many credit as the ‘Father of Medicine’, was one of the first Westerners to align our physical environment with our health.

He used gardens as an integral part of patient therapy in ancient Greek hospitals, although right now, I’d settle for some Deep Heat rather than a spin around the greenery.

Even beyond the obvious mental, emotional and physical wellness, if more of us were growing and cultivating in our own backyards, we’d be more likely to eat more of the stuff that’s good for us.

Granted, if you looked at my current offerings, rosemary would have to become a major food group, but, as many discovered during COVID lockdowns, our gardens are a place of varied nourishment and as most of us are urbanised blockers, it’s an important reminder of the connection between our food production and consumption.

It’s estimated that more than half of all households are now growing some of their own food and another 13% of us are intending to start.

Sure, interest rates and inflation may enhance the economic arguments for self-production but, for me, it’s the psychological benefits that reap the most rewards.

There’s something pretty magical about grounding yourself in your own backyard.

And so, as another gardening effort passes and I put my gloves where I’ll never find them ready for next year’s trip to Bunnings to buy a replacement pair, I hope you too can find some of the joy espoused by our more regular gardening lovers.

Given my lack of ability, perhaps the only advice I can give you comes courtesy of Jean Jacques Rousseau: “Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.”

And, yes, spouse and children are absolutely interchangeable.

Ali Clarke presents the breakfast show on Mix 102.3. She is a regular columnist for InDaily