2.24.2008

I've caught the gardening bug.

In church today, we read Mark 4: 1-20. That's the one about the seeds getting sowed on different types of soil. Some on the road, some on rocky soil, some in the thorns, and finally some in good soil. The preacher pointed out that this is her favorite parable since it is the only one that Jesus explains point blank. Guess he just must have gotten tired of the confused stares from the crowd. A dude can only take so much.

The cool part was that she spent a good part of the sermon talking about what makes the good soil so good. It has to have the right pH level (between 6.5 and 6.9 apparently). It has to be loosely packed. It's got to have lots of organic material and nutrients.

Now, I know what she was going for. She eventually asked the metaphorical, "what kind of soil am I?", question. But the whole time all I could think about is my desire to grab a shovel and dig into some very non-metaphorical dirt of my own.

I know where this urge is coming from. I am reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and it has quite taken over my thoughts. It is about the author and her family spending a year living off their garden and only products grown in their county. She recounts the joys of picking the first tomatoes, the day the cherries ripen, and eating the eggs carefully watched over by her youngest daughter. It makes me want to quit my job and go full time into food production.

I think I might have to settle for trying to run an after school garden with my kids. Challenge 1) finding a place to put said garden. The maintenance staff at school doesn't seem to thrilled with the idea, but I'll try batting my eyelashes a little more next week. If not a school, I have an idea of someone off campus who might let us dig in their dirt. Challenge 2) I have no idea how to start a garden in New England. There is still 2 feet of snow on the ground, so I'm assuming it's going to have to wait till mid-March at least. But that's why they invented libraries and master gardeners. I'll see if I can find a couple of each.

Anyway, I really hope this works out. I don't know what else to do with all this garden fever. I'll keep you updated as my veget-itis progresses.

3 comments:

Marieke said...

Now I want to garden too. I'm proud that I've kept a victory rose alive for 4 months. It's bloomed twice! yeah!

Russ said...

Good luck, Miich. If it makes you feel any better, ours is still covered with snow, too.

The Farmer's Almanac will probably tell you about when the last freeze will be.

tamie marie said...

Yippee! Gardening! I hear ya, man. Metaphors are cool and all, but there's nothing like dirt and sunshine. I hope you're able to get a gardening program started! That sounds fantastic. Keep us posted! And we'll keep you posted too....I'm pretty sure we're going to do our garden here again.