Dirt

This past weekend Forrest and I helped out with a giant gardening project over at the school, which has been an ongoing effort of his, but I was just called in as grunt labor when they needed to shovel 7 cubic yards of topsoil into the new raised beds. My lower back has finally stopped punishing me, almost a week later, but the reward of seeing the now-filled gardens was more than worth it.

Is it just me or does the sight of clean dirt bring a smile to your face? On first look, the phrase “clean dirt” is oxymoronic, but there’s something about the possibilities in a garden bed that feel fresh and new. There’s no weeds to be pulled or rocks to be sifted, simply the potential of spring flowers and summer harvests.

Having made my own soil mixtures from time to time, I always find it intriguing how much more complicated our topsoil is than we know. Vermiculite for drainage, compost for nutrients, additives to encourage germination or discourage disease. And every company and gardening blog has their own preferred recipe. Me? I leave that kind of thinking to others.

The science of gardening is something that I dabble in occasionally, but it doesn’t hold my attention. I wish it did; I’d be a better gardener. But, to be honest, I like the mystery and magic of it all. Until my plants are sick or pest-ridden — then I’m more than happy to lean on my more educated brethren.

I struggle sometimes with not being fully knowledgeable about all things at all times. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s my little perfectionism in a life that is stubbornly imperfect in every other way. So, in releasing any real understanding of why my dirt contains all of its myriad parts, I’m allowing myself to put some trust out there into the world. The plant scientists spend their lives figuring out how and why all this stuff works; why not rely on them?

Perhaps it’s also my little protest against my own hubris. In our society we are expected to have opinions on everything, whether or not we really know anything about them. That’s why everyone is an epidemiologist last year, then a vaccine expert, then an inflation policy guru, and now a professor of Russian foreign policy. It’s exhausting. And everything is as complicated as it seems. So maybe you’ll forgive me when I look at a new garden full of clean dirt and don’t ask any questions before I just dig in.