Good Friday

Stir the Soil

“God stir the soil,

run the ploughshare deep,

cut the furrows round and round,

overturn the hard, dry ground,

spare no strength nor toil,

even though I weep.

In the loose, fresh mangled earth

sow new seed.

Free of withered vine and weed

bring fair flowers to birth.”

                                              Prayer from Singapore

                                  Church Missionary Society (Earth Prayers)

I woke with stinging eyes this Good Friday morning. From my kitchen window, the world is tinged green from airborne pollen. Ah, yes, Spring is officially here. Today the world over, farmers will begin to turn their fields, to till and break up lumps of roots and rocks and lay smooth the ground for planting.

I well remember one garden my former husband and I hacked out of a wooded lot. We lived in the “out-back” of Shelby County Alabama, along with an abundant supply of feral cats, four species of poisonous snakes, tail-slapping beavers, and poison ivy that grew like ferns in a rain-forest. Our nearest neighbor, who's house we could not see, cut a dirt access road across the back of our property just a few weeks after we moved in. We were left with an ugly, red scar and a two foot high ridge of dirt and sandstone on our side of the road. We spent a month cutting out the undergrowth, toppling saplings, and pulling out rocks that we had the boys stack as a barrier against erosion. Furrowing and planting was slow due to the hardness of the clay and the abundance of rocks, and what we mostly got that first year was a few spindly beans and a lot of back-breaking labor. We spent the winter gathering leaf mold from the woods, and muck from the bottom of the pond, (smelly job!) to enrich the soil and by the second year we had a pretty good return on two years of continuous toil. In the end, however, the snakes won back their habitat; we abandoned the garden and returned to civilization. Too much venom and isolation for me.

Every gardener has a tale of joy and sadness. Living and working in dirt has its rewards and its tribulation. But, if gardening is in your blood and in your soul, this is the first day of the new year for you. Get out there and stir the soil—run the ploughshare deep!

                                                      In the spirit,

                                                          Jane