I’ve spent more time than usual sitting the past few weeks, the only way to gain momentum and leap ahead with progress on a book. It’s working. But you know what they say about all work and no play.

I reward myself with time in the garden. Sipping hot tea while wandering through the rows, touching and talking to tender growth. Tending to spring crops, watering the greenhouse, planting cover crops, spreading wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of compost and manure – manure that has been ritually shoveled every day without exception that I am home, for the well being of the horses and health of soil. This is why the garden grows.

Most days it’s hard to tear away and return to work.

Right now I lay on the grass with my fingers penetrating the soil like little rounded trowels, pulling a weed, disturbing an earthworm, connecting with soil and space.

Soil is humbling. A basic need. From which it all grows. Life, hope and dreams.

Funny how one learns to love their soil.

The dogs traipse it in after every rain. It lingers under my nails, between my toes and the creases of my soles are emblazed with it. It also grows my food and feeds my soul and brings the community of life, wild life, together.

Digging deep into the soil now, I pause to watch the earthworms wriggle around wanting to return to the cold, moist black gold they have helped me build.

Couldn’t find one worm when we moved here. They may have been there hiding, but in my haste I ordered a bag online (yes, you can buy live worms) and got the magic moving.

Couldn’t find a garden either, of course, because there wasn’t one back then.

Now, nearly seven years later, I look around and can’t say I created this unless I am some magician – though often it feels like there’s magic here – I simply helped awaken it, brought it to life, and moved a helluva lotta dirt along the way.

I’m grateful for the experience of witnessing the awakening of the land, as if it were waiting, just waiting, to be tended to.

It is an honor to be steward of the land. Growing respect and responsibility to leave land better – healthier and more beautiful – than how it was found.

It all pays off – not just in ways you want and what you can get out of it. You must ask yourself: what can I give the soil, not just what can I get in return.

And oh, I get so much.

A  beautiful place.

A healing place.

A sacred space.

It is far beyond the food it provides. It’s the nourishment it brings body and even soul, feeding the collective realm – beneficial bugs and birds, earth worms, grass that welcomes bare feet and rolling dogs, and clover that will shine all summer to feed the bees and reaches down into deep dark places, sharing some secret goodness with the soil.

And yet, it does provide. Bountifully. It might not be a gourmet grocers produce dept all year, but it is plenty. We eat simply. Seasonally. I am hardly lacking. I may not have a tomato in April but my artichokes have already started, the asparagus are almost obscene, there’s onion and garlic greens and last year’s leeks, lettuce overwintered in the greenhouse, spinach just about ready, kale left from volunteers that reseeded in last year’s cover crop, cauliflower cabbage broccoli fresh chard and kale nearly ready to be shared, and last spring’s chard has yet to bolt.

And then the crown jewel of the soil, of the garden. Next week begins the show. Well over thirty rose bushes will begin to share their abundance. The symbiotic relationship with soil in all its glory, ever growing.

Oh, the beauty, bounty and blessings of soil!

Alright, woman… go back inside and get to work…

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin