Digging Out

The floor loom has sold to a really nice girl I met on Facebook and then in person at the highland games. She's a farmer/forager/craftsperson/earth goddess type who will give the loom a loving home and put it to good use, so I'm content.


The soil arrives on Saturday, and before then I need to move a miniature mountain of compost into the raised beds. I've been chipping away at it, but it has rained nearly constantly since I got back from Utah, which has slowed things down considerably. The compost heap never ceases to amaze me -- how all that muck and waste and cast-offs can become crumbly, sweet earth full of worms. It's like discovering gold in your garbage bin.


We purposely built an extra-wide gate into the fence so that trucks could bring soil straight into the backyard...but then found out that no delivery men are willing to drive over the boulevard to get to the gate. So it means schlepping three cubic yards of earth by bucket and wheelbarrow. I fear Saturday will be a very muddy day, but it's all got to be moved quickly because I can't leave a hill of soil on the boulevard overnight. Even if I can get it all scooped into the backyard and piled in a heap on Saturday, I can then take a bit more time to get it into the beds.


If I had the time and inclination to ponder it, I'd see all this as a metaphor of digging out from the winter's depression, digging out of my inward-looking self, moving out from under bad habits or unhelpful thought patterns, turning over a new leaf, new spring beginnings... but no. It's a literal ton of earth, and it's all mine to move. I may get a little sporadic help from family or volunteers, but in the end, it's going to come down to me, slogging for hours...days... And you know what?


I love it.


I can't wait to dig in, to get my hands into rich soil, even if it's soggy. To smell that indefinable scent of wetness and spring and good things growing. To feel it clump on my boots and work itself into my skin. To pile it into the raised beds and bring out my tender little seedlings (which aren't so little anymore -- I planted them way too early!) and get going on my garden for the season. Now that's a metaphor that rings true for me -- I'm always yearning for the next season of life to begin, instead of being content with where I am. But spring does that to me -- an inner straining to get on with life, to move forward. To grow.