dirt

One of my favorite things about spring is the chance to dig in the dirt and start new things.  This spring I decided to re-work the garden format and in doing so dig up a substantial bit of the yard near our patio.

It is perhaps an overly ambitious plan, but I'm too far in now to pull out.  And so this week when we had a sunny, beautiful afternoon, I decided to embrace this chaos as an opportunity to make do with what we have- dirt.

I love dirt.  There is just something so freeing and wonderful about plunging your hands into it and feeling its earthiness between your fingers.  Or toes. I love watching sand slip between my fingers, and the squelchy noises mud makes, and the smell of the soil after a rainstorm.  And as I've gotten older and more nerdy, I love it for the way it provides nourishment for plants and for the amazing ecosystem that is there, hiding under our feet and sustaining life as we know it.  There is simply nothing like good, clean fun in the dirt.

So as we were unpacking the lunch-boxes, backpacks, cars-eats, and water-bottles from the car,  I mustered up the most excited voice I could and said "Jonathan, do you know what is in the backyard?"  He mirrored my enthusiasm with his "What?!" and I replied "DIRT!!!!"  "Wow!" "Do you want to go PLAY IN IT?!?!?"  "YEAH!!!!" and he started dancing around with his excitement (his excited dance is one of my favorite things about 2 1/2).

So we put the sleeping baby in a shady spot, and got out the shovel and rake and plunged in.

We found worms and centipedes and rolly-pollys and rocks.  We pulled out tufts of grass and examined their roots.   Jonathan discovered how to make dirt clods explode when you squeeze them.    We stopped short of hosing the dirt pile down and making a mud-pit, but at the rate my project is progressing, there will be more afternoons in the dirt!