I was not able to work outside much yesterday.  Even when the rain stopped, the garden plot was pretty soggy.  So I pulled a few more weeds and then went back inside to plot what other than potatoes I might plant this year.  On the way back inside I checked some of my flower beds to see how my tulips and daffodils are doing.  The squirrels have had a great time digging them up, but some are beginning to sprout. 

Squirrels and mud instead of dirt make me think that planting seeds directly in the ground is not my best bet for a productive garden.  So today I will buy some of those little peat pots in which my parents used to start their tomatoes.  Our bedroom window was the sunniest place in the house and so every winter, we girls had the joy of watching little plants sprout and grow.

For my small garden this year I will also buy herb plants that are already growing strong.  They will be safe from root rot and the pesky squirrels!  Good news—the rhubarb is growing strong!  It is a cherished gift from those who gardened in this plot before me.

One of my hopes from all of this digging in the dirt is that we will have fresh vegetables to eat and to share with others.  In past years I have raised a few cherry tomatoes and grown raspberries.  That’s not enough to impact how I shop for food or prepare meals.  This year I hope to grow much more of our own food and I am also hoping to buy more foods produced locally.

“Eating ethically” is one of my goals.  I am humbly reading a number of books this Lent, knowing that others have already thought about the “food chain” and are ready to teach me.  One book that I am finally reading is called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver.  Her family changed their eating habits for a year, eating locally produced food.  Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, has a new book out about eating locally—I have lots of folks from whom to learn.

I think best when I am digging or weeding in the garden or flower beds.  I am hoping for good digging weather today and if not I will “dig” into Kingsolver’s book.

I am still thinking about dirt this morning.  Back in January we had an amazing warm Sunday afternoon and so I went out to the former garden plot to see what would have to be done to resurrect it into a producing garden.  I took my pruners and a rake and a shovel and over a couple of hours filled the yard waste bin (one of the big ones) completely full of dead branches, leaves, moss, pine and fir cones, and weeds.

When I got down to the dirt, I was thrilled to find it dark and rich looking.  As it sat at rest the soil had been enriched by all of the compost that had been allowed to just sit there and soak in.  I flashed back to a brief memory of helping to pick potatoes at a relative’s farm near Denver.  The warm dark earth smell was the same.  One of my crops this year will be potatoes!  I think I have just the right dirt to grow potatoes. 

An added bonus—I love to eat potatoes.  Baked, mashed, in potato salad, even potato soup sounds delicious when made with my own crop!

Dirt, earth, soil, all are the dust of which we are made.  If we are dust, then we have the opportunity to grow new things in our life.  Our lives, like my abandoned garden plot can be resurrected.  We can choose life.  We can do something different that brings life to others.  Bless us and our dirt.  Amen.

Dear readers and myself as well,

This year for Lent instead of giving up something, I have decided to do something.  The something I am doing includes writing this daily blog, but it also involves some physical labor—that of planting a garden, the weeding, the cultivating, the figuring out what might grow in my little plot of earth.

This Lent I am thinking about three gardens—my personal one, the Giving Garden which is sprouting at Trinity Lutheran in Everett, and God’s Garden—this entire planet where God has planted us.

On this first day of Lent—Ash Wednesday, March 9, 2011—the word I am considering is humility.  Remembering that we are dust can be an exercise in humility, but I was actually thinking of the humility I feel when I think of all those who have gardened before me.

I am first of all a humble gardener because I am not an expert.  I am an experimental gardener; I will try planting a variety of seeds, expecting that some of them will not do well in my soil or with my amount of sunlight.  I am humble because I know that someone else first prepared the garden plot that I now work in.  Someone else built the raised bed and planted raspberries.  Someone else had a vision of growing things.  Someone else did a lot of work long before I got there.