Amy in the Garden

Life gave me spring floods and I made topsoil.

Not quite the same as making lemonade from lemons, but it was infinitely more appealing to me as a gardener.

March brought two torrential rains within one week. The water poured down the steep hill behind my garden, and gushed through the drain pipe directly into my garden. My carefully laid beds, newly dressed with compost, were gouged by several channels of water.

My first look at the damage was the leaves washed against the deer netting:

If you look at my “Photo of the Day,” you’ll see the topsoil that washed down. I took that topsoil, and put in onto my three squash hills, all works-in-progress:

A meager beginning...

...but as I realized the amount of gorgeous topsoil the rain had left me, I grew more enthusiastic, and heaped all three hills with this springtime gift!

I then turned my attention to the garden itself. That was a little more sobering.

If you look closely, you'll see both dirt and water rocketed through this pipe.

And I confess to being mightily discouraged when I saw the damage.

Multiple channels were carved out of my beds.

That dirt washed down and pooled at the bottom, held in place by the deer netting.

And a closer look:

As much as I love my husband, who is Mr. Lawn, I was glad to keep proprietary rights to this dirt. It was mine — I composted it, weeded it, de-rocked it, and at least the fence allowed me to keep possession.

So I spent a good part of this Sunday moving dirt. My husband pitched-in, not bitter at all about how close he came to receiving this black gold for his lawn, and we shoveled together, moving the dirt from the deep puddle below, back to the deep trenches above.

I am aching in my back and arms, but I am not complaining. We are many days past the 20th of March, but I know that means nothing. As Henry Van Dyke once said, “The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”

I hope I don’t have to wait for another month for spring to truly arrive, but when it does, my dirt and I will be ready.

WORDS FROM OTHERS

The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.

–E.B. White, “Hot Weather,” One Man’s Meat, 1944