Petrichor is one of my favorite words. The scent of rain as it hits the ground and dry earth releases its mysteries. The odor is most pungent on a hot afternoon after a summer drought—but just the other day a gentle rain began as I walked home; the perfume of it came on strong and I thought: now spring is truly here, and I can’t wait to get dirty.
I am a haphazard gardener. I make plans, so many plans, but like my best design work and sentences, the happiest moments are accidents. Last fall, for example. When burlap bags of tulip bulbs arrived, I tried to keep them organized by color but then a hectic season of work and family unfolded. By the time I had some free hours to dig holes, the labels had fallen off, and the bulbs were all in a tumble. Oh well, I thought, hopefully this will work like a pointillist painting: up close all the colors look random, but if you look from an optimal distance, everything coalesces and makes sense.
Now spring has arrived, the tulips are up and it is a bit chaotic chromatically, but I’m loving it. Outside my studio window, green leaves are unfurling, the lilac blooms are about to open, periwinkle hyacinths and a pink cherry scent the air. Scattered amidst the swaths of green and hellebore and waning daffodils are daubs of chartreuse, vanilla, red—those tulips I dug in months ago—and I feel pleased with the effect, as if I planned the entire tableau. The message the universe is sending seems to be: plan less and accident more.
In spring, I take off the cherished gold ring Clark gave me. I’ve had it repaired twice after the band cracked; my jeweler friend has counseled me to avoid a third repair. Since these next months are going to be all about getting dirty, I take his advice. Yes, garden gloves exist and I have several pairs. I wear them when I prune roses. But when I plant and weed, I want to feel damp soil in my hands, much of it made by composting our kitchen scraps.
We live near the banks of the Hudson River. If you begin a new garden here, you dig a hole, and find clumps of clay (brickyards once lined this river) and heaps of small round pebbles. I dig out these stones and make mini drains at the base of our rain pipes. The clay holds water but is not good growing soil, hence the composting. Now when I find some forgotten vegetable growing some sort of interesting fuzzy mold in the refrigerator I don’t think of it as food gone to waste. I know what remains will be put to good use. Sometimes after I spread compost in the spring, I see the offspring of a rotten squash or tomato later in the summer. Seeds survive a lot, even our neglect.
The New York Times recently published a story about how dirt is good for us. Any kid knows this; is there anything more fun than making mud pies? When I was young, my parents tasked my brother and me with weeding in their garden. At first it felt like a chore, but then it became something else, a liberating experience where for once we were allowed, even encouraged to get dirty. As an adult, hours in the garden are meditative, a rare time when my worrying mind shuts off and I am truly engaged in the present moment. As I work, I can feel the nourishment created from decayed plants and small creatures enter the pores of my skin; the barrier between my body and the earth has broken down and we are all one. A useful reminder about where I will end up. I hear that cremation is passé; composting is the eco way to rejoin the earth.
Our first real estate project in Hudson was a commercial building. Clark managed the renovation of the apartments and ground floor stores, and my task was to make some sense of the 10,000 square foot back lot. It was a barren and depressing space overgrown with crabgrass. There were no trees, so no birds, not even a squirrel.
We hired a guy to mow, until we realized that that we really had was a cracked asphalt parking lot. Clark rented equipment, dug up the asphalt, and we planted three small river birches. For the flower beds, plants came from my previous garden in Brooklyn and from new neighbors who passed on cuttings, daylilies, and iris, and whatever else was too plentiful in their own garden.
The job was too big to do on my own. We hired a neighbor, Joseph, to help dig beds and plant. He grew his own vegetables in a plot across from our property. We didn’t talk much, because we both enjoyed quiet communing with plants, but when we took water breaks he shared his dream of returning to Jamaica to set up a farm. I told him I wanted to visit and looked forward to seeing his tropical garden.
The birches grew fast and within two seasons a habitat formed. Birds came, squirrels arrived from the gardens next door. We had visits from possums and a few skunks. Now those trees are thirty feet high. There is shade and when the wind gusts through the leaves, there is a wondrous shimmering, like brushes on cymbals.
When we moved two blocks away to our current house, we hired Joseph to help. He pulled out poison ivy—he assured me that he wasn’t allergic. Together we tackled the thick bittersweet vines that had entangled shrubs and rose bushes. Some of the roots were almost as thick as my wrist. We had to chop them out with a small axe. When we had clean beds, Joseph helped me transplant cuttings from the garden we’d made in the empty parking lot. There was still a lot of work left to do and I imagined doing it together; we were a good team. And then, just a year later, Joseph died suddenly, and my heart is still broken.
In addition to living in the garden, I like to read about other city folk who have found their calling in the dirt. For this, I take a dip into E.B. White’s One Man’s Meat. He begins in 1938, after he and his wife Katharine and young son left New York City to live on a seaside farm in Maine. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean Hitler’s armies were vanquishing Europe. The chapters read like a diary, with musings on raising chickens and vegetables interspersed with commentary on the faraway war, the urgency of rejecting nationalism, and safeguarding the rights of all beings.
In July 1940 White wrote, “I just want to tell, before I get slowed down, that I am in love with freedom and that it is an affair of long standing and that it is a fine state to be in, and that I am deeply suspicious of people who are beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators merely because they are succeeding in war. From such adaptable natures a smell arises. I pinch my nose.” If only he were with us now.
In a later work, Onward and Upward in the Garden, published two years after Katharine died in 1977, White described how she would leave the house to “go out among her borders.” She might be dressed in a suit and Ferragamo pumps (also my mother’s favorites), but if there were weeds to pull up she got into it, slipping out of her muddy designer shoes as she returned to the house. She too must have been pulled into the garden, the urgency of pulling up dandelion and bindweed overtaking any need to remain tidy.
Thank you for reading and as with all posts here, I’d love to hear from you! More to follow each Friday. I hope you’ll subscribe and share with other readers. You can find out more about my memoirs Perfection and Eva and Eve here and purchase here. I work privately with writers on creative non-fiction projects. If you are interested, you can contact me through my website: juliemetz.com. A first consultation is free of charge.
Lovely and pungent every which way, including for a non-gardener.
Julie, this was such a nice read. I even learned a new word - petrichor. I grew up in the Midwest. Everyone had a screen door usually with their initial on it. Before it would rain a smell would emanate from the screen. I can remember to this day some fifty years later.
I also like to garden ungloved unless there are thorns involved. Thanks for sharing this. I feel like I’m digging right next to you.