Getting Dirty

Last weekend, my husband Nate, daughter Addison, and I went to Grandma's house to landscape her front lawn. We got there Friday night, greeted by a hardy meal of homemade lasagna...MMMM mmm! The sun went down quicker than we thought, and so we decided not to delay any further. As Grandma and Addi slept, we dug up her front yard - a trench for the edge of the flower bed, holes for the holly bushes. And even though I was doing all this manual labor, I realized that I wasn't tired. I was invigorated. finally around midnight we went to bed, because there was much to do the next day.

Saturday, we planted flowers, shrubs, and hammered a border into the ground. We spread mulch around everything. After all was said and done, the exhaustion hit me. Oh man, but it felt so good. I don't get dirty and move heavy things around in the sun most days. It seems that American luxury is not having to lift a finger, except to text. But there's something to this digging in and getting sweaty thing. It really makes me feel alive.

Maybe it's the fact that the stuff in the dirt makes the flowers grow. Maybe when it gets underneath my fingernails, it breathes a fresh sense of live into me.