Dirt Story

A conversation with soil

You walk on me today, but I remain solid, liquid, soft, dry, malleable and waiting. I’ve been waiting under cover of grass, home to worms and beetle larvae, waiting to be turned, waiting for the rocks to be freed.

“How many rocks?” I ask with one eyebrow raised.

So many. Pounds. Kilos. Mountains. Bucketsful.

“Bucketfuls?”

Sure. Yes to both.

I feel your fingers sift through soft layers and spike the edges of sharp stones, pull them free and toss them with the rest – granite, basalt, diorite, marble, thin trails of quartz, lumps of concrete. A dinosaur egg, or possibly a dragon egg from a Game of Thrones book. You should keep looking until you find the other two. These things always come in threes. But the rocks? Not in threes. In hundreds. In thousands. In so many your fingers will ache from carrying them.

“You’re sweet-talking me,” I bluff, all stubborn muscle. I can say that because I know where the ibuprofen and tiger balm are for later.

My remnants have kept traces of all I was before, all of those minerals, those hardy weed seeds just waiting to piss you off later. You’ll regret letting them see the light. I feel your bare feet, your hands dry and forming blisters. You’re not enough to keep them all at bay.

“Hm,” I nod. And then I glance over my shoulder at the corner of the garden. “You remember the blackberry patch?”

Fair point.

“You’re going to be something new. Something unexpected.”

I should have known when I first felt your fingers worming between the grass roots and under the sheet of moss. I should have known you wouldn’t rest with just grass growing here. I should have known you’d want a conversation.

“So tell me a story then.”

Here was a sand pit. The kid grew out of it too quick. So I was like, hey, let’s try some quack grass.

“Nope.” (yank)

This was a rabbit form.

“Cool. Let’s mix the bunny poop in. It’s good stuff.”

What about that spot that someone tried to make into a fire pit all those years ago?

“Old news. I’ll toss in some grass sods and bury them.”

A tree was here once. It was a long time back. If you look closely you can still see the sunken space, the collapse of sodden bark and root ball by time and microbial action. There were trees all over. Squirrels couldn’t squeeze between them. Birds got caught up in their endless branches. I was a forest. I was a refuge from open space. The foxes came to me and made dens and raised cubs under my protection. The winters would bring down leaf litter, twigs, topple snags long dead from rot, send limbs crashing from the weight of snow.

“I saw what it did to my greenhouse last winter.”

Yeah. I saw that, too.

“I’m going to rebuild.”

Here?

“Here. Right here. This path,” I walk for emphasis, toes stretching into the new space carved out by my hoe, “a perimeter around the new building. No foundation, straight into you this time.”

For me?

“For us. And I bought melon seeds for next summer.”

Sweet.

“Exactly. So… Are we in this together?”

I haven’t worked with anyone like this before. Just the grass. And the trees. And the worms. And crickets. Maybe some spiders. Nematodes. The occasional groundhog. I’m not sure I’m ready for a new relationship.

I nod and dig quietly while the ground thinks.

What would it look like?

“The greenhouse?”

The relationship.

“Oh.” There are three blisters forming on the palm side of my right pinkie finger. It’s a good moment to stop working and just stand in the site of where the greenhouse will go. A pattering of rain amid the hot sunshine breaks over my shoulders, and I can hear the beat of it against large cabbage leaves behind me. “I’ll do the digging. You’ll need some amendments. Phosphate, gypsum, azomite. But this part,” I trace a line with my fingers in the dry dirt, little puffs of it vanishing into the wind between us, “this will be under cover all year long. It’ll stay warmer, I’ll tend to watering it, and we’ll grow new things.”

Like melon seeds?

“Like melon seeds,” I grin back.

Is that anything like purslane? Or buttercup?

“Not even a little bit.”

Really new then.

I nod. And we start working together for a moment, my hoe carving the boundaries of where new walls will go, the soil complying under the sharp blade, rocks rolling past my exposed toes, just enough moisture to block up edges.

This sounds… nice. What about the smaller humans?

“Well,” I sigh, “they’ll be excited at first, but that will wear off. It’ll mostly just be you and me.” And there’s no resistance in the next few strokes of the hoe along the north edge. None at all.

Careful, there’s a piece of broken glass there.

“Oh. Thanks.” It clinks cheerily as I toss it into the garbage bucket by the gate. “This part is done,” I announce, leaning the hoe against the side of the house. “And I need a shower.”

But you’ll be back?

A broad smile works its way across my face. “Daily.”

Your trans friend,

Robin