Memorial Gardening

[randy_byers]

Today was my annual Homebrewed Compost Application Day, wherein I dig out my homebrewed compost (spiders and beetles and worms, oh my!) and spread it on this or that garden bed. There's never very much, but I always get an absurd pleasure out of the DIY aspect of it. This year I spread most of it on the area where I grow tomatos, because my tomato plants were pretty anemic this year.

I also planted some Siberian irises that are descendants of plants that were in Joanna Russ' garden. These came to me courtesy of kate_schaefer, who spread them around this year in the wake of Russ's death. There will be more about this in the forthcoming issue of Chunga.

In a perhaps balancing act, I tore out the irises in another bed, which I'm hoping to plant with something more bee-friendly, probably a rosemary or thyme plant and possibly some of the bee's friend (Phacelia tanacetifolia) seeds that holyoutlaw picked up for me somewhere.

It felt really good to get out and dig around in the dirt. I've been incredibly stressed out by my job lately, and have felt exhausted and half-sick this weekend. It was a tremendous release to break a sweat in the act of breaking soil. Maybe there's something to the idea that getting dirt on your skin is a healthy thing to do. That's what "studies show," you know.

Comments

[dalmeny]

Joanna Russ irises? Now that's cool.

Sorry to hear you've been stressed at work. I hear gardening's therapeutic, but I leave all that to dmw. He gives us fruit trees and strawberries.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it makes me very happy to have some of Russ' irises in my garden. May they live long and prosper.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I usually feel a little better after tromping around in the mud. I bet it's the same principle.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

What I was going to say was that scraping paint off the house was just grueling and draining, but digging around in the dirt felt restorative. I don't actually know why.