Embodied Health

(Aka: a love letter to the A-hole who dumped rocks in my flower bed)

By Denver Clark

This Sunday for the first time in 3 ½ months since the birth of my daughter I finally felt inspired to do something I have been wanting to do for a long time….. replant the front garden bed of our home. My husband joked in December when I was considering starting this project 9 months pregnant that the baby wouldn’t care what the front of the house looked like. The thing is, I DO. This home is the first home I have ever owned and since the day we got the keys, nothing makes me feel prouder than pulling into the driveway after a long day at work and seeing my beautiful front yard.  Over the last 2 years however, our watering system stopped working and no matter what we planted in that space it was never the right fit for the sun exposure or the soil. We have been learning as we go how to garden and care for our home and we’ve made many, many mistakes along the way.

 The biggest challenge of all has been the ROCKS. You see, the original home design (like many others in our neighborhood) included a full rock bed in the front of the house. This is often the choice for homeowners who want to deal with minimal upkeep. Then, somewhere along the road, another owner dumped DIRT onto those rocks, and yet another owner decided to plant VINES on top of the dirt, on top of the rocks. Those beautiful, sprawling green vines that helped me fall in love with this house actually choked out the watering system and quickly started looking more like sticks…. mocking me and my lack of experience gardening. So after the first year, watching how the seasons brought change to our lawn and garden we decided to tackle the vines. This project was the WORST and halfway through after many heated words between myself and my husband we walked away, front bed halfway planted and backs aching. For the next few months, I regularly sprayed homemade, and store bought (forgive me) weed killer to try and make the next phase of vine removal easier.

About 6 months later, we once again attempted to fix the front yard. Every time we dug to pull out vines or add a new plant we would run into pounds and pounds and pounds of yellow and white rocks. By the bucketful, we loaded rocks the size of eggs into our yard waste bins little by little each week hoping not to offend the waste management people who had to dump them into the truck. Once again, we left the project partially done and I continued to feel like a homeowner failure and a bad wife, having unloaded my frustration on my husband throughout the project. The only person who hated those rocks more than me was him.

 This Sunday, I decided it was finally time. I would venture bravely out into the yard ALONE and handle the issue by myself. Prove to myself that I was capable of caring for our home without help from my husband…..prove to myself that my body was strong enough to dig and plant 3 months postpartum….My husband was more than happy to help by driving his bigger car to the nursery for mulch and plants and at 9am I began.

 Every single time my shovel hit the dirt it landed with a loud “clang” against the hard rocks below. Slowly with patience, I’d place my foot against the edge of the shovel and wiggle it back and forth, back and forth, sinking deeper and deeper into the dirt, bringing up 10-15 rocks with every shovelful. Bending over and scooping my open fingers through the dirt, I would sift out the rocks and toss them into an empty disposable black flowerpot. Each plant that went into the ground was replaced in its pot by pounds of rocks.

 The longer I dug, the higher the Florida sun rose and soon it was 95 degrees out. I could feel the sun beating down on my shoulders and the sweat dripping off of my face but the steady rhythm kept me present…… dig, step, wiggle, dig, step, wiggle, dig, step, wiggle, tilt, lift, dump…. Over and over again. Each new location beginning with that first seemingly impossible puncture, hitting that hard layer of rock and getting no more than a few centimeters into the dirt at a time, pressing into the edge of the shovel, driving it back and forth, tilting it back, popping trough the roots of the old dead vines, stooping over to sift through more rocks…

            Somewhere around 2pm it suddenly occurred to me….

THIS IS MY LIFE.

The rocks left there by people before me aren’t my problem but they ARE my responsibility if I am to grow the garden I want. They never really go away. Just like the thoughts and emotions I’ve been conditioned to believe, the thick layer on the surface has been too intimidating to tackle up to this point. I just wasn’t ready to put in the work. I didn’t yet understand the intricacies of the soil, the sunlight, the seasonal shifts to bring lasting change to this garden bed. But now, at 36 years old I am ready. I’m ready to toil and sweat with patience and understanding that although the rocks will never be completely gone, if I just keep digging slowly deeper they’ll decrease in number and my newly planted seeds will grow stronger roots. I am removing them slowly. I AM making a difference. The moment I realized this, I began to cry. Catharsis in the dirt. I finally “get” gardening.

And no, after 8 hours of work my yard really doesn’t look very different at all.

            But I certainly FEEL different. NOW I KNOW.

            So thanks to that A-hole who dumped all those rocks into my yard.

            You are the hero I didn’t know I needed.