vitality

39 degrees
wind, 6 mph
53% humidity

Sore muscles tonight...I spent a couple hours on this gorgeous day digging the last few feet of sod out between the herb and veggie gardens. It got up to 51 degrees today, and not a cloud in the sky. It went from this:

to this:

It's a 90 square foot addition to my garden, making it a total of approximately 280 square feet. 

Removing sod by hand is not an easy task. I found that getting a roll started with a shovel would allow me to get enough of a hand hold to then pull the sod out and roll it up.

The amount of biomass that results is quite remarkable. I am hoping to dry it out and get more soil back before composting it. 

While toiling away, I was contemplating the drive I have to do this work. It is not necessary per se; gardening at home rarely is, particularly in this culture. I could simply go to the store or a farmer's market to buy produce. If it was important to have something locally grown, I could subscribe to a CSA (and have in the past). So if not out of necessity in the basic sense, then what? 

"Vitality" is the word that arises. 

1   a : the peculiarity distinguishing the living from the nonliving

     b : capacity to live and develop; also : physical or mental vigor especially when highly developed

2   a : power of enduring

     b : lively and animated character

I love "peculiarity" in the first definition. As if this is a strange thing, to be alive. 

seed cathedral

29 degrees, partly cloudy, light snow

wind, 12 mph

72% humidity

In February, I pored over the 2013 catalog of heirloom and open-pollinated seeds from Seed Savers Exchange. This publication is seductive, tantalizing me with its vivid descriptions and gorgeous photos. 

An example:

36-Cherokee Trail of Tears Bean

(aka Cherokee Black) Given to SSE in 1977 by the late Dr. John Wyche, SSE member from Hugo, Oklahoma. Dr. Wyche's Cherokee ancestors carried this bean over the Trail of Tears, the infamous winter death march from the Smoky Mountains to Oklahoma (1838-1839), leaving a trail of 4,000 graves. Green 6" pods with purple overlay, shiny jet black seeds. Good for snap beans and dry beans. Pole habit, snap or dry, 85 days. +/- 1,600 seeds/lb. Packet (50 seeds) $2.75. 

"Graves" and "Green" next to each other. That's it, isn't it? Life and death side by side. 

If I ordered everything that I wanted, we'd need several acres to grow it all. I pared it back to this, which I will add to my cache of seeds from last year:

Is there anything more powerful than a seed? It is life held in stasis, waiting for the right conditions. It starts out a dry little speck, and produces leaf, flower, fruit and root. In these 21 packets lies more potential than I have room for; I will not be able to plant them all. 

Todd (my husband, for those of you who don't know) just introduced me to Thomas Heatherwick of Heatherwick Studio. He and his team designed the UK pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, titled the "Seed Cathedral." Here's a great TED talk about the piece as well.

"There are 250,000 seeds cast into the glassy tips of all the hairs. By day, the pavilion’s interior is lit by the sunlight that comes in along the length of each rod and lights up the seed ends. You can track the daily movement of the sun and pick out the shadows of passing clouds and birds and, when you move around, the light moves with you, glowing most strongly from the hairs that point directly towards you. By night, light sources inside each rod illuminate not only the seed ends inside the structure, but the tips of the hairs outside it, covering the pavilion in tiny points of light that dance and tingle in the breeze." (from project description)

I am sort of speechless at the brillance, elegance, and audacity of this piece. 

the first day of spring

34 degrees, overcast with frequent sunbreaks
wind, 20 mph
44% humidity

It is the first day of spring. Potential is in the air, despite the chilly rattling of the windows. The daffodils are up, their yellow heads still tightly wound and waiting. A few errant snowdrops have found their way into a pile of overturned sod from last year. Persistent mint is already leafing at the edges of its enclosure; oh, how I strive to be as tenacious. The ground is thawed, and I was able to take up 30 square feet more sod to make space for MORE garden. 

I hate exercising for no reason; this work better suits my temperament. I like the rubbery feeling of worn-out muscles, the dirt under my nails, the outside smell of my hair. I love reclaiming soil from a mute, complacent grass patch to bring forward succulent, giant tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, peas. My body was made to hunch, dig, lift, rake, pick.  

While doing these things, I think about plans, life, grubs, now, bird song, the pickers who go through our garbage, neighbors, travel, humus, teaching, damn cucumber beetles, children, fresh basil, friends, blossom end rot, family, mint in my salad, dinner. I also think about art a lot. I've been asking some questions lately. Specifically, though not entirely, these: what connection do art and gardening have? Can they be integrated into one another? Can my studio be both inside and outside? 

Other artists have gone here before. Fritz Haeg, Mel Chin, even Jeff Koons. I need to research more, perhaps find some companions. Among this cohort right now are poets Stanley Kunitz and Mary Oliver. This blog is named after one of Stanley's writings from the book The Wild Braid:

Compost

The compost pile is a site of transformation, taking what has been cast off and returning it to the garden. It's not just garbage, after all.

The distillation of any philosophy of composting has some connection with the positive concept of waste and death. The contribution that mortality makes to civilization is the equivalent of what composting contributes to a garden.

We are all candidates for composting. So we cannot approach the compost heap without a feeling of connection.