reclaiming the soil, reclaiming the soul
I love to garden. One of my favorite photos is from helping my grandparents pick potatoes from their garden. I remember that day, even though I was maybe 3 years old. My cousin Emily and I wore too-big gardening gloves, and followed behind my grandpa. He hoed up the spuds, we picked them out of the dirt. It felt like magic to see so many tubers emerge from under a crackly dead vine!
my cousin Emily and I both remember this day, and absolutely needed to have this photo on the memory board when my grandpa passed away in 2014. I’m the tiny blonde on the left.
When I moved to my house in Idaho, I had grand dreams for my own garden. That first year, I grew potatoes. Potatoes can grow in almost anything, even very poor soil. Or a pile of dead leaves. Or a stack of tires filled with dead leaves. I don’t recommend this anymore, because apparently the tires can leech into the soil/leaves and thus into the potatoes, but that first year I successfully harvested a glut of potatoes from reasonably poor conditions, simply because I kept them covered and well watered.
That’s the secret to growing potatoes.
Everything else I grew in Idaho needed considerably more intense intervention— we’re talking years of building up the soil in layers of compost and goat manure, hand digging to preserve the strata and the worm population, mulching. it was hard, back-breaking labor in hot temps. I loved the idea of it, but I honestly hated the work.
I was lucky, though. There was nothing contaminating my soil. It just sucked.
In urban areas, the soil is often contaminated with lead or other heavy metals. Folks have to use raised garden beds to keep the toxins (actual, legit toxins, not the “omg toxins” kind) from ending up in their vegetables.
Some plants can be used for reclamation and improvement purposes. Like plant therapy for the soil. Sunflowers can pull cadmium, zinc, and copper from the soil. Dispose of the plants at the end of the growing season, and the soil will be better for it over time. Sunflowers have even been planted near Chernobyl and Fukushima.
It would be better if these remediation strategies weren’t needed at all, if we could just trust the earth to feed and sustain us when we want to grow something. It felt like that kind of magic when I was a kid—simple magic. But creating a better world does take work. Drawing heavy metal from the soil is still pretty magical, but it takes us to do our part too.
When I paint, my heart returns to my backyard garden in Idaho, to all those layers, the careful hand digging with a garden fork. The layers are important. The slow remediation of the soil was hard work. Painting feels easier than that, but not on the days when I’m stuck. In the end, it’s the same intentional process of working through a season, season after season, and seeing what fruits emerge from the soil.
