Bye bye sod. Hello flower and vegetable garden for the neighbors to share.
I can't really say how much I love dirt.
It's an unspoken thing, like rocking out to Bruce Springsteen alone in an empty house after your marriage collapses. Like looking up and feeling clouds move through your belly, pausing to simply be clouds.
Dirt love was not bred into me. I didn't grow up on a farm or in a potter's studio. My dad didn't drive a backhoe. I never once saw my mother dirty, though I remember when we clipped iris together (and I saw two grasshoppers mating and she shushed me, saying, "Give them some privacy, Barbara.")
| The thing is, nothing smells like dirt. Nothing stills the mind like dirt. Nothing is as complex as dirt and yet forgotten and disregarded and maligned. Worms are genius architects, building and enriching the soils, maintaining all our lives. The roots of every plant on earth know this, but we do not. That's the level of our ignorance: gargantuan. | 
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I say, get acquainted with your best neighbor, dirt.
Get down on your belly, in the dirt, cheek planted on the earth that supports your every breath, and the breaths of everyone you know and don't know and could ever know, every bird you stop to admire in song, every curve of water, every sparkle of leaf, every cup of tea, every baby's eye, every car trip through mesmerizing civilizations.
Get down onto the dirt and say thank you. Three times.
Lie flat and wait for the silence. It is there and bigger than you. Once your body relaxes, and you smell the indescribable essence of dirt/land/soil/snow/switchgrass/meadow/lawn, say thank you three times. One with each breath.
Get down on your belly, in the dirt, cheek planted on the earth that supports your every breath, and the breaths of everyone you know and don't know and could ever know, every bird you stop to admire in song, every curve of water, every sparkle of leaf, every cup of tea, every baby's eye, every car trip through mesmerizing civilizations.
Get down onto the dirt and say thank you. Three times.
Lie flat and wait for the silence. It is there and bigger than you. Once your body relaxes, and you smell the indescribable essence of dirt/land/soil/snow/switchgrass/meadow/lawn, say thank you three times. One with each breath.
| I do this at every quarter of the moon. 
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You could pay for therapy. Pay for health retreats. Or a swanky vacation. Pay for new clothes to mask your uncertainty with the out-of-control life you've built. But why? I recommend dirt worship. A quarter-moon thank you is a fine start. Masters classes are free thereafter: gardening, tree planting, hiking, caving, camping, birding, biking, mud masks, get your dirt on. |
Brought to you by dirt:
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Endless possibilities . . . mine include beans, carrots, squash, cucumber, tomato, chard, lettuce, beets, marigolds, peppers and lobelia. Once all this sod is gone!
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