Touching soil

I spent the weekend outside, in the yard. It's officially spring and the weather has shifted, which means it's now a race against time to rake and mulch before the hosta and stachys and bleeding hearts poke their heads too far above the ground, pull the weeds as they sprout so they can't disseminate themselves, and lay down fertilizer and seed before the lawn wakes up.

You could call it yard work, because it's certainly labor, and I have the sore muscles to prove it. But I prefer to think of it as gardening, because "work" implies that it is an unpleasant, necessary task. If that were true, I'd pay someone else to do it. (This is why we have a house cleaning service. May God keep me prosperous enough to never scrub my own toilet again.)

What is gardening?

It's primal. There's nothing more basic than a human being coaxing plants from the earth and watching them grow. It requires only physical effort, tools, water, sun, air.

It's zen. You can spend a day in repetitive tasks, focused only on this bed of leaves that must be cleared, one rakeful at a time, one bag at a time. Everything takes longer than you think it will. And the time always passes faster than you expect.

It's creative. You are shaping your landscape, carving its outline, coloring in its borders, removing the extraneous. You are decorating your home's outside face. You are making aesthetic choices. Which annuals should I plant this year? Which plants should I divide and where should I move them? How should I lay this border?

It's renewing. Buy a packet of seeds, plant a row, and watch shoots emerge. Wait, and watch the flowers transform into food for your table. Every fall, when the temperatures drop to freezing, the hosta yellow and die back, then seem to disappear completely. And every spring, when it begins to warm, sharp purple spear points poke through the earth like some strange horned beast and within weeks a cluster of great, broad green leaves has sprouted, bigger and fuller than the year before. Divide the plant, move its newly created twin and watch the cycle repeat again in two places.

It's solitary. With or without iPod, or family in the yard, you are alone with your work. Thoughts come and go; some you notice, some you don't. You are bent to the task. There is no news, no scandal, no world eruptions, no bank statements. It is you, and your hands, and nature.