Some thoughts on dirt and circles

First daffodil of the year - March 17, 2010

This is what greeted me this morning as ran out the door to get the boys to school. The very first daffodil of the season! Made me very happy.

Which is good because I had bad gardening dreams last night. In my dreams, everywhere I went people had their gardens planted already and the gardens were starting to produce. It was clear that everyone knew some gardening secrets that they were very unwilling to share with me, and they had some sort of vested interest in keeping me from getting my garden started. I think my frustrations about not getting in the garden last weekend due to the rain were showing through. I rarely have new dreams – usually they are just a variation on a theme. This was a new one though.

It does let me know how important growing my own food for my family has become to me. Five years ago, gardening would have never crept into my dreams. Now I have this relationship with the dirt in my backyard that’s stuck in my subconscious. Heck, I’ve got a compost bin out there, just to create extra nourishment for the dirt. The ultimate goal is for that dirt to send nourishment into the foods that I’ll feed my family, but somewhere along the way I’ve formed a relationship with dirt. I’ve come a long way, baby.

I feel like I’ve come full circle. It’s a small circle. There are bigger circles that I still need to travel around. But in this area, I’m back where I began, and I learned a little along the way. I started really paying attention to the environment and how my family’s actions affect it about four years ago. I started making small changes, but none of them had anything to do with food. Then I heard great things about Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Since I’m such a fan of her fiction (and I needed to order a second book to get free shipping when I ordered one of the Harry Potter books – must tell the whole truth here), I bought the book. It sat for a while, but I started reading it around the holidays a little over two years ago.

I remember being part way through the book, sitting in a chair next to my Christmas tree, and planning a garden. It was December, but I had this sudden and desperately important need to grow a garden in my backyard. Kingsolver’s book introduced to me to the concept that what we eat and how far our food travels has a huge impact on the environment.

So as I sit here this morning, thinking about my gardening dreams from last night and thinking about the things I need to do to make the dirt healthy so I can grow tomatoes, eggplant, cantaloupe, green beans, herbs and lots of other things that are making my mouth water just thinking about them, I realize that I’ve completed a small circle – from caring about the environment, to caring about food, back to caring about dirt.

End stream of consciousness ramble.