Must. Get. Hands. In. Dirt.

My horticultural library. Some rusty iron fence sections. A Charlie Brown collection castaway plants and roots awaiting a new garden and a chance at life.

I had barely unpacked these choice items from the back of my U-Haul before the familiar urge struck:

Must. Get. Hands. In. Soil.

It is how I know a place. And I think, how I know I am alive: feel the soil.

Inundated with all of the mundane details of moving, I made sure there would be an immediate horticultural job awaiting me once I returned to Ohio. So, I adopted a spot for beautification on the old state route that was once the main drag of my home town. A choice spot between the beer drive through and the abandoned Ponderosa.

As if on cue, I pull into my driveway with my big orange Uhaul, and ten flats of annuals, courtesy of the City of Cuyhoga Falls, await my attention. I hasten the unloading of my worldly possessions so I can go play in my native soil.

With garden fork I churn the soil, the thistles and mullein and crabgrass have already taken hold. But the soil turns easily. Earthworms squirm. Some clay, some concrete fragments, but not the worst I have seen. There is hope for these cosmos and verbena and begonias.

Neighbors see me filling milk jugs to transport water to the site, and leave me empties on my doorstep. The hairdresser at the beauty shop next to the beer store gives me her cell number so I can call her anytime to open the shop and fill my water jugs. It is good to be home.

As the cars whiz by and more than one acquaintance stops by to say hi, I enter the familiar zone, of working to bliss. I don't mind the full afternoon heat, did not apply sunscreen, and forgot the floppy hat. I will have to live with the ghost of a baseball cap singed onto the back of my skull.

It is elemental, at some level, this need to be in the soil. A friend says every year when her mulch pile is delivered, she has to restrain herself from rolling in it. I know exactly what she means.

No matter where I live, I always find a way to have some acreage, no matter how humble, in which my hands can immerse themselves in the soil. My plots tend to grow larger and larger over time.

In Kentucky, deep back at the base of a holler, I found the one spot in the front yard that got a little afternoon sun. I planted tomatoes. I didn't even mind too much when the neighbor's band of clattering Guinea hens pecked at each one the moment it turned red. What mattered was the cultivation, the working of the soil.


In Philadelphia, it started with the forlorn sidewalk tree in front of my first apartment.

I pulled busted up concrete from a crumbling sidewalk so it could have more water, and transplanted some vinca. A neighbor saw me and offered me a trial plot in the community garden. This plot doubled, and then quadupled, and then, one thing led to another.

I soon found myself tending an estate of many acres. On my keyring, keys to courtyard gardens all across the city soon jangled.

So, with this inauspicious start in my old hometown, this little Devil Strip plot on an old state highway that has seen better days, we begin again.

That is what gardeners do. We plant things. Things that will grow. Things that will die. Things that will surprise us. Things that will disappoint us. It is out of our hands. But the toil, the hope, the possibilities are what sustain us. That, and the way loamy soil crumbles in our fingers, and the earthworms wriggle, and the robins dance in the soil we churn.