The dirt of my dreams. Of my dreams! We’re having a thaw — today was gorgeous, sixty-five degrees, sun shining, a little windy but then again, this is Livingston and we’re used to wind. So outside I went, spading fork in hand, to turn over some dirt.
Now my last garden, in California, was a wonderland of clay. Turning over soil was a marathon activity which often involved me standing on my spade, bouncing up and down, trying to wiggle it into the dirt. And my first garden was in Telluride, at nearly 9000 feet with a 45 day growing season and well, very rocky soil contaminated with heavy metals from the tailings pile (I ignored that part. I only grew a little bit of spinach and it couldn’t be any worse than just breathing that stuff).
So imagine my joy when while standing outside talking over the fence to my neighbor Paula, I casually stuck my spading fork into the soil and it went all the way in! And I turned over the soil and it was …. well, wet because it’s still early spring … but that magic word, friable, came to mind.
God love Mrs. Violet Warnick, who raised eight children in my (1200 square foot) house and fed them out of that vegetable plot in the back yard. That piece of ground has been tilled and manured and had things growing in it for at least eighty years, and I, somehow, got lucky enough to get to grow things there now. Yee haw.
So, I went to town … I have one long long bed that is going to be full of hardy shrub roses and hollyhocks and whatever else is tall and lovely and cottage-garden-like. I turned over all the soil in the bed alongside the house, pulled lots and lots of mint roots out, and I’m distracted tonight thinking of all the gorgeous bulbs I can plant next fall.
I realize there’s about to be a war on, and there are all sorts of serious problems out there in the world. But frankly, I have beautiful soil. It’s warm and sunny here. I have the happy fatigue that comes after doing something good and physical, and I’m dreaming of hollyhocks.