Removing the hidden and buried to open up the fertile earth
Monday’s weather: Day two of a steady soaking rain; cool and damp and dark. Everything green outside is flourishing, including the herbs, enjoying the constant mist. The Siberian Iris have just bloomed today, and soon I shall plant the Impatiens.
Monday’s drink: A Heineken (we have 18 left over from the Derby party) and perhaps the last of the juleps.
Monday’s quote: This one from Walt Whitman:
“Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything.”
I’m not sure I understand it fully, but it seems worth a little thought.
The backyard is two steps closer to being something other than a muddy garage, although it’s still mostly just that. Good thing this year’s Derby party wasn’t a packed house, as people would have ended up standing around outside in a gooey, jumbled dirt farm that doesn’t look like anything sensible. Of course when I look out back I can see what it will be but isn’t yet. But I’m not everyone else.
As a side note – and one of an unusually self-accomplished tone from me – I was genuinely pleased how many people commented on how fit and trim I look. And younger. People felt compelled to reach out and touch me, almost to check if the change was real or not. After years of wearing clothes too large to cover my body too large, it was a victory of sorts, and I enjoyed my lap.
That said, my real victory this last month has been the backyard. Specifically, the concrete.
Several weeks back I took some time off, telling C I wanted to build garden beds in the back. While a few days seemed a rather ambitious time line, I launched into it Friday after spending an idle Thursday moping and fussing over my personal dramas. I filled the car with dirt and ferns and Impatiens and other greenery, and started digging. Not that I got very far.
Quickly I saw that the old concrete walkway – years forgotten – was right where I wanted to build the bed. I started test shovels, poking here and there, trying to figure out just how much was buried and where it ended. Turns out: it was all still there. The walkway to the alley, the concrete pad the old porch and stairs used to rest on…it was all still there, covered by years of dirt and disuse, sealing off my garden bed. So much for the time line.
Saturday morning I went out to show C just how much was there, convinced the only solution was to call someone to dig it up and remove it. He had a different idea. “I bet this will just bust up…” he said, grabbing a shovel. We started digging; finding the edges, digging underneath, prying it up. Shovel by shovel, it started to break up, but that was just the easy stuff.
Hours later, armed with neighbor D’s sledgehammer, we were whacking and digging and hauling slabs of concrete anywhere from 1 to 6 inches thick. That afternoon a “we haul your dirt” guy showed up, chucking the slabs into his truck. Somewhere between ‘we’ll never be able to do this’ and ‘this should be easy’, C and I finished the job. The hidden concrete was gone, and the ground was open for the first time in decades.
Talk about self-accomplishment. Not only did we surprise ourselves, we worked together seamlessly as a team. And it was genuinely a pleasure to do it. Damn hard work, but at the end…well, I’m still impressed with ourselves.
The earth is still open there. I’ve got some plants in the ground, but haven’t yet built up (or even found) the wood to build the borders; that’s to come. But this was something that just had to happen. Sooner or later, someone was going to have to face the slog of digging that shit up and getting rid of it, and now it’s done.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Even discussed it with CV, my therapist. For me, at the surface level, this felt like a way for C and I to do some healing after a long, difficult, at times painful start to this new year. For CV…well, of course he wanted to dig deeper.
“Think about that, Doug. Something old and formerly useful now forgotten, blocking growth, hidden by years of work to forget about it. If anything was to grow there, it had to come up. And the only thing for it was for you to dig, lift, break, toss…over and over again. Hard work.”
Like the work I’ve done in therapy. The analogy just works…and keeps working. Old, useless, blocking, buried, forgotten, digging up, sweat (and even a little blood), breaking up, carting away. Even the point of it all works: I’m building a new bed for C and I. Uh-huh. Even I get that.
So the work will continue through the Spring, but a lot of difficult and necessary stuff is done and over. And now I’m ready to use my strong body to build and grow new life in the back yard.
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