Dirt doctor

Posted on | January 25, 2009 | 9 Comments

From Angelina’s latest post

The lesson is plain: always keep one foot in the dirt.

I want to know what other gardeners feel when they are working in their little kingdom. Tell me what it does for you, what you think about (if anything) while you prune and plant and weed. I want to know why you do it, how often you get out there, and what do you like to bring inside from it? I want to know what your hopes are for your gardens- are you working to transform it or is it already perfect the way it is today? What are the greatest lessons you’ve learned from your garden and working in it?

In short- I want to know everything.

Everything. My hands, my feet, my nostrils, my heart — they all stretch for spring right now. On Friday we had a nearly 50º day and the grass began to show around the edges of the driveway. The mounds of snow on top of the raised garden beds compacted and grew shorter. I stepped outside dozens of times to fill my lungs with the softer air and the absence of a sharp pain delivered to my head. Oh, how I itched to get my hands in the dirt. I opened the front and back doors to air out the house and made a mental note to start my seed inventory and planning this next week.

But for now I need to stay focused on tending the inside garden of my home. We’re in an uproar of rearranging and purging, painting and organizing. With me working at home, I’m far more in tune with the chaos than is healthy so we have to get some kind of a routine and system going. Or I’m moving out. I’d gladly move into a tiny garden shed if we had one so I could live in the rich, sharp fragrance of soil and steel.

I wish I could say that putting my house in order has the same therapeutic qualities as a few hours working in the garden. It does not. It stresses me out and I say things like, if it’s not fixed I’m moving out. To the garden shed. Let’s please just buy a garden shed and we’ll put a tiny wood stove in it and I’ll live out there and we’ll all be so much happier.

Right now I look out there and see the intersection of life and death. This is the in between time when everything waits. I’m waiting. Snow’s falling. The world freezes over. But it’s coming.

Luckily the temperatures dropped back down — I’m looking at 9º right now on my browser weather bug thermometer. Everything that began to melt off has now frozen over and it’s a rock-hard, crusty world. The garden will have to wait, but we’re at the winter halfway mark and it’s almost time to start seeds in the basement. I can smell the potting soil now. Of course, that space is still a mess from last winter and in order to work down there, I need to finish the job of the upstairs.

I’m looking forward to the coming growing season so much. It will be my first on this property not working outside my home every day. I won’t have to try to squeeze in the garden work on weekends and in a single hour at the end of each day between meal prep and bedtime. I’m working, and will hopefully still have plenty of projects crossing my desk, but I intend to spend several hours each day with my hands in the dirt.

I can’t wait to hear a low rumble coming out of the southwest, to smell the ions in the air, and to not have to watch it through the plate glass window behind a row of cubicles. I’m going to step out into the wildness and let the gusts of wind lift my hair off my neck. I’m going to touch the plants and talk to them as I trim suckers and pull weeds from around their roots. I’m going to listen to the chickens and feel the first drops of rain on my back and let the energy of the storm climb into me through my feet and fill me with the day.

I’m going into therapy this year — garden therapy. It will work my body, my mind and most definitely my psyche, which has grown fragile and bitter in recent years. My self knows that the time spent working with the earth repairs most everything that feels wrong. I can move as fast or slow as needed and while my mind may follow threads of thought far out into the ether, a part of me stays rooted. Answers arise and a steady drip of creative sap runs in my blood.

A new friend and I plan to share a table at the Haymaker Farmers’ Market this season. We’re both urban gardeners who want to start out slowly, so this will give us a chance to grow unique veggies that other vendors aren’t offering. Having this goal will help fuel my therapy and keep me hanging out with Dr. Dirt.

I need to find my way back to the person I was becoming when we lived out at the other house; to merge that woman who lived and breathed garden with this woman who is happier living in town. I look at this photo and miss aspects of living out there where the sky was so much bigger. But I know I can create a small city version of that wildness right here with some time and sweat and seeds.

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