Page 29 - ALG Issue 2 2017

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An Ode to Digging
‘A garden is a grand teacher’ according to the horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll. But whether it’s the allotment, the rolling elds of the British countryside or the hanging Gardens of Babylon, they all have one thing in common – soil.
Soil, dirt, muck – plants just can’t get enough of it. It is essential for plants and for life. What would we do without it? And yet it is not just something that plants grow in, it is a great teacher.
Waking up early one (pretty cold) morning in spring with questions on my mind, I gave into the somewhat perverse urge to dig. Trying hard not to disturb the slumber of the rest of the household, I made my way out of the house. It takes 10 minutes to walk from front door to shed door on my allotment.
Standing in the chilly fresh air, listening to the dawning of a new day is something I nd invigorating. Dawn is hopeful, energising. It’s a funny thing listening to the dawn chorus and feeling the earth come awake. It speaks of stillness not busyness. Why is that, I wondered?
The digging called. There are different ways of digging. There is the intense ‘I will dig, build a bed and impress’ and there is the slow, plodding ‘I’ll just keep going and wind up with a result’. I opted for slow plodding.
As the fork entered the soil, I felt a sense of a new beginning, something would emerge from my circumstances and it struck me that this is true of life. Everyone has plans and dreams, but it is only when you take a crucial step, or make a simple change to your
life that a new beginning begins. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a relationship, a business or a project...the fork has to enter the soil.
Turning the soil I see live shoots of things that I didn’t plant and as I dig more, I come across inoffensive looking blades of grass only to discover, as I seek to extract them, huge root systems that would undoubtedly have been a major issue if left untouched. What a metaphor for life! The little problem that has deeper roots. The simple things that awaken deep emotions and attitudes. Strangely enough, as I weed the patch, as I tackle each blade of grass, it becomes
much clearer in my own mind that the blade of grass, the little problem that is niggling me, has deep roots. I begin to understand that for much of life a simple thing that stops us achieving what we want to achieve may have deep
roots – there are no quick xes!
Then as I dig
further, weeds with
no tip on the surface
begin to appear.
Slowly, patiently (okay
ploddingly) I clear the
patch. It’s not perfect, but
it’s good enough. It’s possible
to grow something here. What’s true of the soil is true of life. How often do we wait for perfect circumstances before making a change or taking a leap in a new direction, when all we really need to do is to begin to grow something?
At the end of the morning’s digging, my mind is clearer. I may not have answers to my big questions but I have a much better idea of which ones are important and what might grow to help answer them.
The real result, of course, comes as summer progresses: the weeds have been controlled, the new ideas planted and growing and the rst turning over of the soil or the mind is bearing fruit. Digging, can you beat it?
Ian Dewar
Chair, Cinder Lane Allotments, Lancaster
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