Number 21: digging
This time I have an excuse for being sleepy, for a lazy Sunday ('lazy' has still managed to include walking the dog twice and a visit to an elderly relative; I like to feel my laziness is deserved). I have been given a patch of earth, and I have been digging.
The patch is at the bottom of my Nana's garden, and once my Grandad grew vegetables there. I remember it as far back through my childhood as I can remember - runner beans, cabbages, the long green spears of onions. Blinding summer heat off pale-baked earth. It hasn't been dug over in five years, which presumably made it hard going, though it actually didn't seem so difficult. Maybe in not knowing how difficult it ought to be I just didn't know to resent it.
We're on clay, here. It makes a particular pleasant slicing noise as you slide a spade in. It also clogs the grip on your boots, and slathers slow layers over your tools. It smells delicious. The slow steady rhythm of digging (spade in, press, lever, press again, turn, break up, dig in, spade in again) eliminates time. My Nana tells me I dug for over an hour, but if I'd been asked to guess I would have looked at the work done and known it must have taken almost an hour to achieve that much, but it felt like nothing. It felt like twenty minutes, quarter of an hour, to clear four patches of earth to plant in. I had meant to dig rows, but somehow faced with the soil I ended up digging patches. I am, I should possibly point out, used to patchworking, and tend to apply what I've learned there to other aspects of life.
There were a few thousand birds hiding in the trees around me, judging by the noise they made. The sky was silky January grey. I became far too hot in my big coat and gardening gloves, and by the time I switched to the fork I felt the beginnings of back pain in that good, earned way I imagine people feel during yoga. And it was good. And it needs digging again, at least twice more, it needs compost digging in, I need to mulch the paths (I have been reading a book, you may well guess), even before I think about plants. But it is good to get outside. I am a cerebral little creature. I spend much of my time quiet, contained, with books, with my thoughts. Getting dirty and bashing my shins with muddy tools can only be good for me. And later in the year -
Green spears of onions, buried promise of potatoes, and maybe those jaunty poles of beans. And I will have well-earned back pain, and bruises on my shins.
The patch is at the bottom of my Nana's garden, and once my Grandad grew vegetables there. I remember it as far back through my childhood as I can remember - runner beans, cabbages, the long green spears of onions. Blinding summer heat off pale-baked earth. It hasn't been dug over in five years, which presumably made it hard going, though it actually didn't seem so difficult. Maybe in not knowing how difficult it ought to be I just didn't know to resent it.
We're on clay, here. It makes a particular pleasant slicing noise as you slide a spade in. It also clogs the grip on your boots, and slathers slow layers over your tools. It smells delicious. The slow steady rhythm of digging (spade in, press, lever, press again, turn, break up, dig in, spade in again) eliminates time. My Nana tells me I dug for over an hour, but if I'd been asked to guess I would have looked at the work done and known it must have taken almost an hour to achieve that much, but it felt like nothing. It felt like twenty minutes, quarter of an hour, to clear four patches of earth to plant in. I had meant to dig rows, but somehow faced with the soil I ended up digging patches. I am, I should possibly point out, used to patchworking, and tend to apply what I've learned there to other aspects of life.
There were a few thousand birds hiding in the trees around me, judging by the noise they made. The sky was silky January grey. I became far too hot in my big coat and gardening gloves, and by the time I switched to the fork I felt the beginnings of back pain in that good, earned way I imagine people feel during yoga. And it was good. And it needs digging again, at least twice more, it needs compost digging in, I need to mulch the paths (I have been reading a book, you may well guess), even before I think about plants. But it is good to get outside. I am a cerebral little creature. I spend much of my time quiet, contained, with books, with my thoughts. Getting dirty and bashing my shins with muddy tools can only be good for me. And later in the year -
Green spears of onions, buried promise of potatoes, and maybe those jaunty poles of beans. And I will have well-earned back pain, and bruises on my shins.