Tilled Under
The soil heals more than we may ever understand.
I can still remember the soil of our lower garden when we turned it over in 2020. The rocks were heavy and abundant. The soil was sadly not something I would call soil but more like sand. There was an abundance of invasive spotted knapweed. Everything felt hopeless and dead in the land beneath my boots. There were no worms or signs of real life to speak of. The color of the ground was far from rich brown, but it was this gray-tan color. I still wonder why I thought we could grow anything right in that soil. Nevertheless, we decided to.
That spring, the entire world was going through the same experience of a global pandemic, yet we all were experiencing it differently. As it felt like the world was burning down and everything we knew was slipping away, I needed to feel that even the worst soil still held life and hope. I had a tiny baby and a toddler. I needed to believe in hope for their sake, even if it felt like it had left me a month prior. Time felt both held in place and moving faster than I could handle all at once. All that was planned in my life and career felt like it had been ripped out from underneath me. I no longer could recognize what was up and what was down.
Before the world shut down, I had many plans for myself, just like anyone. I wanted to build something more significant with my business. Begin a new chapter. I had childcare lined up and thought I had it all figured out. Then when Mid-march began to ripple through our lives that year, everything suddenly felt like it was experiencing an earthquake. My career was unknown all of a sudden. Mike's jobs were drying up, and we held these two small lives we had to protect in now a scary world.
By April of that year, I needed to know I could do something outside of the four walls of our home and beyond the endless piles of laundry. I wanted to prove that hope still abounded because, deep in me, I still wanted to believe it did. I looked at that plot of land that used to be where we held dinners with loved ones in the setting sun of summer evenings and decided I needed to make it new. In some way, my longing and grief for the loss of those times were so deep that I needed to wipe it all away by tilling it under and building something new. Maybe somewhere deep in my soul, I felt that if I focused on creating something new, not only would my longing and sadness be turned under the soil with the worms, but I would remember that it could feed something new.
So as the older played and the baby slept to the sound of a tiller, our wild field where bistro lights used to hang for evenings intended for lingering over a bottle of wine and good food went under the soil too. I let that chapter go hoping they would return one day, but knowing they would never be the same.
When the tilling was complete, I sat on the hill looking at the new plot, and tears dripped down my face. Watching that space change felt like a confirmation that nothing would ever be the same, yet I felt excited and hopeful. At that moment, I let go of just one more thing, like a branch from my trunk that needed trimming to grow in a new direction. I ached but knew I would heal.
The work began that year with loads of compost. Tender, broken, tilled, and rebuilding just like that sand that would soon be soil. We kept our distance from the workers as they delivered it all. We were still feeling that unknown of what is safe now. What is okay? Something I never thought I could feel in the open-air world, but here I was with a tiny baby sleeping on my shoulder, more vulnerable than I thought was possible.
I spread layers of compost on that bed. Then I spread mulch. I watched as the kids grew and the first sprouts emerged. I remembered what it is to have hope in life. Nothing was outstanding that year in that garden, but in some way, I never expected it to be. There was no fence other than a fishing line, and we were building a coop. I lost every blueberry I planted in there. My ideas didn't take, but we grew astounding zinnias in all colors. We had melons for the first time. We saw how our intentions for something new were returning to us, and we knew this was just the beginning.
As the years passed, the garden soil got better. The chickens cleared the garden. The soil got richer with every splat of their poop. The compost got darker, and the soil got thicker with organic matter. I grew, too, in every way that soil did. I saw the things that worked and what didn't. I saw how I broke down the old truths I held, and they created something I never expected in me. Things I never thought I would unwrite in my life. As the soil became richer, my soil in myself did the same. The ways I saw my body, the things I feared, the pain I held from childhood, and the ways religion had run its roots far too deeply---all of it was degrading. In turn, something was bound to build a version of me I never knew was there but could only become this way with this sort of attention.
Last year, this garden was more than I ever dreamed it could be. The buckwheat rose to my chest. The plants communicated together and grew bigger than I ever imagined. The raspberries never stopped giving, even after the first snow. The cosmos blew in the wind and created a shelter for the mice. Squash took hold that we didn't plan, but they made a jungle for the kids, who are so much bigger now. Mike laid a path to cement the fact this garden is permanent. It confirmed this new chapter is now who we have worked hard to become, and this space is the true story of who 2020 reshaped us into.
Now I am here in April again, standing and looking at this garden. The same place where three years ago, I sat and cried out of pure grief at losing everything I thought was true. The same place where every tear represented something lost in those dark moments of that spring when the whole world shook into a new shape. Standing here, I see something full of all-new potential. The soil is so rich and loamy, dark and full of life. The worms are almost everywhere. The rhubarb and asparagus are ready to give us more than we ever knew they would. Already the garlic is rising to protect everything soon enough.
Watching it all, I feel much the same in myself, and I wish I could tell myself in 2020 what would come to be here now. I wish I could hold that version of myself and give her peace in the grieving. I want to let her know how thankful I am that she decided to rebuild the parts of herself she knew she needed to let go of and that she showed up to do so over the years. The work is evident now and apparent in every aspect of who I am. Everything is becoming still, and most importantly, everyone is safe. How thankful I am to that very tender version of me in those years. How strong I see her now that she not only chose to search for hope in the hopeless but did it in the face of some of the darker days of that decade of her life.
As I begin to spread seed in this soil this spring, I no longer walk through that gate desiring to find hope; I know that it exists here. Instead, I am looking to be in gratitude. I am looking at it all in this new way. I am not trying to perfect this space. I want to let it be a celebration of all that was let go so it becomes something only loss, grief, and decay of what was can birth. I plan to seed it, plant new things this year, and let it show me how far we have come. I plan to sit here in deep awe of what happens when we decide to heal alongside nature, knowing we are the same. The soil here holds such a story and such memories. It knows it just as well as I do. Though I will pen the story with words, she will do it in the abundance she will create with towering tomatoes and buzzing bees on every flower that will arise from what was broken to pieces once but now has become new life.