The Good Earth

The chill of the morning wore off and the garden drew me in.

I planted three rows of potatoes and grieved. I didn't plan on grieving. I planned on enjoying the warmth and the sun and the soil.

But as I dug the rows and tucked in the potatoes, potatoes that Thomas grew last year from potatoes that he and Philip grew the year before, I began to think about our springtimes in years past, all of us working in the garden, and then I began to think that this is probably the last year we will be planting potatoes in this soil.

I looked at crawling worms and chocolatey brown soil and sat down on the mulch hay and wept.

Grief is a funny thing. When it comes, it seems best to sit down and let it wash over, like a rain, or a wave in the ocean. So I did.

I wept, and Brownie came over and stuck her face in mine, and gave me a big slobbery kiss on the mouth. Which made me laugh. And grimace. And get up and get back to work.

If we move back to Texas in time to get the kids enrolled in school in the fall, we should be able to harvest a decent portion of the garden, with God's help. Would be nice to cart potatoes and onions with us to Texas. As I hoped for harvest, as I always do at planting time, I envisioned carrying these seed potatoes with us to a new garden. In new soil that will probably need a great deal of amending, old hay and manure. That will probably have no worms in it, but after a year or too, probably will.

It is awfully hard to have March come along and not plant potatoes. So we plant them. And hope.

Maybe tomorrow I will pick up some onion sets and stick them in the other rows I dug out before supper. All the lettuce we planted last month has come up. Teeny tiny, but before too long, with enough rain and sun (and if the chicken fence holds) we will be eating salads. I hope.