touch grass

I’ve found myself increasingly referencing the “touch grass” meme, partially due to stress and partially due to excitement around a garden plot in Seattle. I grew up in Florida and, after a summer where our grass died, my brother and I took over the backyard digging holes. Before we moved, we even made a hole mansion of sorts for our family dog, complete with multiple underground rooms that we covered in plywood found while dumpster diving at constructions sites of actual mansions springing up around our changing neighborhood. I loved those hot days endlessly digging and sometimes filling a hole up with water to create our own muddy pool. When my partner and I first came to see the plot and clean it up, I didn’t put gloves on, wanting to feel the dirt in my hands again.

This last week, we came to start planting a few items and to clean up around the beds. Here’s a quick before and after of a section I got lost in tearing and cleaning up. It’ll hopefully be the home of some future sunflowers and raspberries:

After growing up seeing my Grannie’s gardens and after taking care of a few different ones on various house sitting adventures, I’ve long wanted to take one on. Katy spent 6 years on the waitlist for a garden plot and I feel fortunate that she has far more real world gardening experience. For anyone who knows me well, you can imagine how many questions I had for her yesterday (Why are you doing that first? What does XYZ instruction refer to? Does this look okay?). This came at a perfect time when I feel pulled more and more to invest locally in Seattle (and take a break from travel). Some photos from the day as I’m building a little website with some AI created features to help us track the garden year over year (more to come once I get it up):

In a strange turn of events, two different quotes popped up that came at a needed time and that feel related to the softness that touching grass reminds me to embody. The first I shared on Facebook 13 years ago:

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”

Pema Chödrön

The second is from Jedidiah Jenkins who wrote recently about how Nature’s Default Is Tender. A best friend forwarded it to me and I loved reading the entry, especially this captured thought:

Now imagine, these clovers and flowers have evolved for a hundred million years to be as they are now. They have lived in this harsh world of death and fire, and stayed soft. They do not have thorns. They do not have hard bark…If softness is everywhere, it must be that tenderness is the default. 

Jedidiah Jenkins

Because I love quotes and the above two pull me towards another long time favorite, here’s one more for good measure:

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place”

Iain Thomas

Find and protect your softness.