Soil Season

Over the last few days, I've gotten my hands back into the soil.

It's early March, far too early to plant outside, but just the right time to begin replenishing the raised beds in my front yard.  Two of them...my four by four bee-feeding wildflower patch and my four by eight asparagus bed...won't need much help.  But the rest of them will need a bump of nutrient rich earth, hand-tilled, if they're going to continue to yield.  

That fresh soil amendment will come from one of my two large compost piles, specifically the one that I started with the leaf-fall the autumn before last.  That pile absorbed a 2024 summer's-worth of nitrogen-rich grass clippings, and twelve month's worth of coffee grounds and vegetable scraps.  Through the miracle of worm-tailings and a the devouring work of a complex microbiome, it's become a half-dozen heavy wheelbarrow loads of dark, complex soil.

I'll shovel it into my tippy old barrow at the pace of a load or two a day, usually when I realize I've been sitting on my behind too long, then push and drag that load up the little slope to the beds that rest in my light-filled front yard.  I'll dump it out, and shovel it in, and rake it level.  One or two beds at a time, over a week or two in March, and by the time the last frost date has passed, the garden will be ready.

This has happened for years now, because if I want there to be a modest harvest at our table in the summer and fall, it must happen now.

There are no guarantees as to what happens next.

It may be a season of wild abundance.  Or not.  It could be desperately, relentlessly dry.  It could be drowningly wet, as rain follows rain follows rain.  There is no way for me to know precisely how things will be, because that's too complex and chaotic a reality to project.  I can only do what I know will maximize the probability of my desired outcome, and leave the rest to Providence.

Now is the time the soil must be prepared, no matter what the year may bring.

With Hands in the Soil

Out in my front yard, my garden is stirring after an erratic but wintery winter.

In the two eight by eight beds that flank my driveway, the green shoots of garlic that overwintered are getting perky again.  The asparagus has started to offer up its first tentative shoots, which means I've got about a month of early spring harvest ahead of me.

The budding seed potatoes that were starting to get out of hand in the darkness of a cupboard have found their way into half-barrels filled with compost and leaves.  Those taters were getting desperate, flailing out long dead-white tendrils that made their section of the cupboard look like something out of a John Carpenter film.

I've been clearing out all nine of my raised beds, pulling old weeds and removing excess leaf-fall.  With the beds prepped, I've brought wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of compost from my slightly disappointing compost yield for this year.  Even though that new earth isn't quite ready, it's still got plenty of wriggly waking worms mixed in, who'll help continue to break down the soil now that it's been mingled with the earth of the beds.

All of it means that I've got my hands in the dirt now, and it's a good feeling.  It is, rather literally, grounding.

I was down on my muddied knees weeding one of my four by four beds on a warm afternoon when a neighbor walked by.  This happens regularly, and it's a way for overly-introverted-me to be stirred to conversation with the souls who live nearby.  I'll hear their own stories of planting and soil, or tell them about something I'm excited to be growing.  It's part of what makes gardening such a pleasurable thing.

This neighbor was, as it happened, one who had recently yelled at me as I walked my dog past his property.  Twice.

Ah, thought I.  It's That Guy.

As he strode up the sidewalk, eyes forward, I suppose I could have ignored him.  Just kept my head down, busily paying attention to anything but the human being who was crossing in front of my property.

But the day was bright and lovely, and spring was in the air, and my hands were in the warm earth.  Gardening has me in the habit of offering gracious words to passers-by, and I was in no mood to be anything other than neighborly.  

"It's a beautiful day to be out in the world," I piped up, trowel in hand.

He looked over, a little startled.  "It really is a great day," he replied.  Not a hint of animosity in his voice, not even a whisper of the snarl that had last soured it.  He offered up a gentle smile of genuine pleasure at a shared and glorious afternoon.

"Enjoy your walk," I said.

"I will," he said, and continued on up the street.

It's good to get your hands in the earth.  It really is.