Nothing profound or political here, just musing on this crazy numbness that has recently come over me. We're getting ready to move, getting the house ready for other people to live here. The garden, which was here well before we bought the house, suffered a bit of a smash-up when Terry the Contractor punched out a giant square of foundation onto the beams that made its border. It was tired and a bit rotten, and I had always questioned why someone planted a garden on the northwest corner of the yard, against the house and shaded by the deck for most of the day. Last night Ariel and I took out all of the rotten wooden beams and then set about leveling the soil into the lawn.
How beautiful was that soil! For the 6 years that we lived here before England, I had cultivated that lowly dirt with compost and back-breaking labor. Last night it was rich and dark and gorgeous. I finished up alone, with a gentle rain coming down, and had to fight the urge to run out and buy seeds of squash and watermelon; carrots, onions, and spinach; tomatoes and peppers -- all the lovely things I had grown there and tilled back into that soil. Instead, I seeded it with grass.
Now I feel all dirty... inside.
