Today I helped my daddy plant the first seeds of spring.
Our garden is a little thing – 8 square-feet of precise soil
carefully measured, topped with compost from our kitchen,
mixed with bone meal laid last week (a labor of love),
irrigated by a little rubber hose on an automatic timer.
It is April 9th, and everything is ready – almost
– for today.
The worms are coming.
2,000 of them, in the mail, any minute now.
When they arrive, we are supposed to be ready
to put them into their new environment right away,
so we work, and – thank God – it is the first really nice
day
in Chicago all year. Beautiful. Sunny. Cool. A breeze.
I lay the final 2-inch layer of compost with a little trowel
while daddy sifts the rest to free the darker, damper, dirt.
At noon, the worms arrive
in a little box – much littler than “2,000 worms” sounds
like.
We open it to find a green cloth bag stuffed with dirt and
worms,
from which a few little ones have escaped and are crawling
toward the edges of the box. They are tiny, thin, dehydrated.
Poor things. Daddy picks them up, saying “Oh, no you don’t,”
but he misses one, so I pick it up and look at it in my
hand.
Barely moving, but yes – it is alive.
We take them to the three compost bins and sprinkle them in,
to join the few that have survived the brutal winter.
I watch them writhe in the soil, slowly spread, and start to
dig.
Then I take the bag over to the garden, and place the rest
of them
in the very center of our 8 square-foot plot:
a clump of them are stuck together: they look like a little
squid
or octopus, flailing its tiny tentacles, until they, too,
spread and dig
(I notice a particularly feisty one that jumps and flips a
couple times)
they roll, they inch, they slither, they crawl,
to the safety of the dark and damp
to the nourishment of dirt and water
to work their alchemy,
little magicians…
dad explains how they improve the soil
by eating and excreting their nitrogen-rich castings, “black gold,”
(worms must be the only animal whose poop actually smells
good!)
and how at the same time they aerate the soil
– little moving tubes – veins, or wind pipes of the dirt.
they are as much the earth as they are animal…
I told my dad that I
would help him for just an hour
(because I am “very busy”)
but I am having so much fun that I decide to stay
and help him with the final task of the day:
planting spinach, lettuce, and onions.
I am honored
when he offers to let me do the planting.
I dig the rows with my fingers – shallow and thin,
while daddy fills the little disc that spreads the seeds.
and, after careful measurements, I sow them in the ground,
whispering small blessings of deep gratitude
and prayers for great abundance.
Then, I reach my hand into the bin
which dad has filled with black gold from last year’s worms,
and with that, cover the newly planted seeds
and gently pat them down.
And just like that, our work is done,
at least for today: the first seeds of spring are planted,
and will grow, with a little help from our friends:
the sun, the earth, the rain, the wind,
and the little worms.
