Digging the Dirt

This is a Mama-Om re-run... Since summer has finally arrived in Seattle, it seemed like a good time to share this one!

We stumbled upon the Seattle Tilth annual edible plant sale. It was my mom, Orlando, Mica, and me.

I tried to resist buying any plants. I didn't think I really needed any. But then I remembered we needed tomatoes, and Orlando said he wanted to plant a squash, and the basil was so gorgeous...

Needless to say, we brought home some plants. Then we planted them. It was hot and very warm for a May day. Orlando chose the spots for his squash and for our two cherry tomato plants. He started digging a hole for one of the cherry tomatoes, and exclaimed, "Wow, there is a lot of ants here!"

We watched the shiny, tiny black ants crawling over the bumpy black dirt. I wondered if we had found an anthill, but then Orlando made another scoop with his trowel. And uncovered a grub, coiled and thick white with a red spot, still squirming, being eaten alive by the dozens of shiny, tiny black ants.

Ick.

But I tried to act nonchalant. "Oh, those ants are eating that grub."

Orlando was also a little bit icked-out too, but he gently scooped some dirt and moved the grub and its carnivorous companions a few inches away from our hole, and reassured me, "I moved it out of the way, Mama."

I had the urge to plant the tomato somewhere else. Did I want some squirmy, dead grub to feed the roots of the plant that would make the fruits that would feed us?

And then I thought: All this is happening in the ground, anyway, all the time, and this death does feed the roots of the plant that will make the fruit that feeds us.

So we planted our plant, and we covered it with dirt. The dirt that contained death and life, and life eating death, and life giving life.