I walked in the garden this morning with bare feet, enjoying the feeling of cool soil on my skin and warm sun on my face. It’s been so nice, having a garden. The past three years in Houston had me feeling so removed from the food and plant life that I had grown up with in the lush and productive valleys of the Pacific Northwest. The apples at the nearby Target had all of the crunch of the apples I remember, but none of the sweetness, none of the aroma, nothing of what made an apple worth biting into. Even if I took the bus to the small farmer’s market, the vegetables there were already wilted by the heat radiating from the surrounding concrete and glass and tasted ever so slightly of the adjacent highway. And there was delicious fried fish and chicken on every corner. So that’s what we ate.
But we moved, recently, for my job in a soil ecology lab and we settled in a rural area of Vermont, a state I had never thought about until I had decided to move there. It all started with herbs. Just to supplement our meat and potatoes diet that we had fallen into while living in the city. It was like a breath of fresh air, thyme and sage in my burger patties, fresh dill on my sour cream. I always thought that gardening would be a calm and peaceful activity, but I was surprised by the urgency that it sometimes demands. We have to use the cilantro, today, or it will bolt, and we won’t get any. This urgency was compounded by the abundance of vegetables that just found their way into our home. For example, my boyfriend got a job at a coffee shop that also sells at the Saturday market. He gives coffee to the farmers in exchange for unsold vegetables at the end of the day. How could he refuse a smiling, sun kissed farmer who is saying that you just have to try this radicchio. We can use it all each week, with careful planning. Some things I can pickle, but it’s spring still and how do you pickle salad greens?
Then there’s my job. I work with an older, grumpy man that only seems to light up when he talks about his kids or his garden. I took an interest and was rewarded with six tomato starts on my desk one day. I have to keep them fertilized and watered because he asks about them now and then. Then my boss left town, leaving me to pick up her CSA, a ‘brimming basket’ she gets each week to feed her family of four. It’s too many vegetables for us, but I feel responsible for them. We are starting to run low on pickle jars and have started having salad and a fried egg for breakfast.
It’s become a bit of an obsession, to eat all of these vegetables. But honestly, it’s been transformational. I think it’s right what they say about how eating well can improve your mood. Back in Houston I was always reading, or watching TV, or playing games on my phone. Now my spare time is spent out here, being productive. I’ve moved beyond herbs; I’m making structures for pea plants and watering deeply the roots of a transplanted raspberry bush. The other day, I found a crop of radishes that I had forgot I planted, hidden among the weeds. I can almost feel the chlorophyl that I chew out of my morning breakfast coursing through my veins and turning the sunshine into happiness and contentment.
My boyfriend gets mad at me for going into the garden with bare feet, because he says my feet are getting gnarly and I always track in soil. I just don’t see the point of washing off something so good and sweet as soil. But he is right, my feet are getting gnarly. They are dry and cracking like the hands of landscaper or forester, or like the base of cactus cutting that’s been hardening off. There is even a bunion. But I can’t give up the feeling of being so close to the soil, I spend so much time in it, I might as well be comfortable.
As a soil ecologist, I know that soil is teaming with life. Fungi, bacteria, viruses, worms, parasites, insects, you name it. I also know that this life is not well understood. In the case of fungi, people say that ninety percent of fungal species remain to be discovered. I know that soil is generally safe, and it is actually good to expose yourself to a wide variety of microbes. But I also can’t stop thinking about the medical section of my undergraduate mycology course, where we learned about fungal skin diseases. One in particular, blastomycosis, comes from a fungal spores liberated from disturbed soil in the eastern US and causes lung infections and bark-like skin lesions. That’s not what’s happening to me, but it’s made me think about what’s still unknown in our soil that could be potentially infectious.
I have been spending so much time in the garden that I sometimes fall asleep in the camping chairs we set out on our back porch. I don’t know when it started happening but sometimes, I would wake up on the ground to the smell of soil until the sun warmed me up enough and I would sneak back into our shared bed. My boyfriend thinks I’ve lost it, that I am spending too much time in the garden, that I am serving him grilled romaine for dinner. But this interest isn’t about him. It’s about me.
I don’t think it’s actually a bunion, on closer inspection. I noticed it as I was washing my feet before heading inside. I’ve been more self-conscious about them recently. The dryness and cracking have gone away but in its place are a few little skin tags. And the bunion-thing is getting bigger. By boyfriend says I should go to the doctor, but my foot actually feels normal, and I haven’t been concerned about it until just now when I noticed a little nail. I think this bunion-thing might actually be a toe.
For some reason I felt the need to hide it right away. I put on some shoes and wore them up to the bedroom, then put on some socks for safety. I only let it out when I am gardening, my boyfriend doesn’t bother me out here anymore. In truth, we’ve been fighting, and he mostly stays at a coworker’s house. I only mention that because I actually haven’t slept once in the bedroom since he left.
Now the tomatoes are bulging red in the garden. They are a looming reminder that I will soon have many more vegetables than I know what to do with. I already have to eat my boyfriend’s share of the produce. If I don’t eat the zucchini or asparagus in time, they will lose their tenderness and succumb to a woody replication or their ideal selves. Already, so much has been wasted in the compost pile which has grown large since spring. The center has grown hot with microbial activity and has churned out black, nutrient rich soil. I know this because I reached my hand into the center of it, pulled out a handful, and tasted it.
Recently, my sixth toe fell off. It didn’t bleed or scab. It’s almost like it was never there, save for the small indentation it left behind. I buried it in the garden to hide it. I covered the hole with compost and water it like everything else in the garden. I am hungry, all the time, no matter how many vegetables I eat. I only move in the sunlight now and when I do, the skin tags pull up soil as I walk.
One morning, in my garden, I was lying next to the hole where I buried my bunion and watching it as the sun rose. I noticed a bit of compost raised above the rest. I brushed it off to reveal a long keratinous nail, tinted as green as my own. I can’t explain it, but I felt so much joy. I bared my teeth in a big smile.