Soiled

After Monday's rains, Tuesday brought with it fresh possibilities and a big old truckload of dirt. Twelve cubic yards to be exact. When my husband and I stood looking at the fresh mound we both had the same thought, "this isn't going to be enough." And, like so many times before, we were both dead wrong. Yet another thing I've learned in my travels through life is that a pile if dirt is kind of like a box of Chinese take out. (A similarity that is not limited to how uncomfortable you are after processing either of them.) 

Starving, the little origami container does not look as though it could possibly feed you satisfactorily. Then, two plates later when the box still doesn't look like you've made a dent in it, you realize the Chinese are out to make us fat(ter). The dirt just kept coming. Even after we actively wished we'd run out, as an excuse to stop, there was plenty more. Together, (ok, mostly the hubs) we filled six raised beds and created another space a good eight inches deep. Still the pile of dirt stands; at least another backache's worth.

In addition to my visually deceptive dirt lesson, I've also had another uncomfortable epiphany about myself. About a month ago, out of nowhere, I became acutely aware that I was not an athletic person. Now anyone who has ever seen me would not find this revelation shocking. Rather, what was shocking was that I managed to hold the belief in my head at all without the faintest hint of incredulity weaseling in. But there you have it. I'm not athletic. All evidence is assuredly to the contrary.

This wasn't my most recent epiphany, however. This one had to do with my (former) belief that poison ivy didn't affect me. People all around me would be covered in reaction to the stuff and I hadn't had the slightest rash since I was a child. I honestly believed I was immune. What I failed to consider (scientists, no snickering please) was that I have not been exposed to poison ivy since I was a child. I am a cream puff (see above). On the rare occasion I actually am out in a sort of wilderness I stick to trails and leave the woods to the furry creatures and outdoorsy types. After a week of persistent itching and patches of skin that look like photos right out of Mosby's, I must concede not only to being unathletic and susceptible, but delusional as well.

Luckily, I'm not the type of person to find evidence like that unsettling. Instead I brandish my rashes like battle scars. I may be a botanical idiot that doesn't know what poison ivy looks like because the most I've seen of it was in Batman and Robin, but I'm an idiot with a real live garden that I've worked in myself, and I've got the funky rashes to prove it. I've also got broccoli, onions, snow peas, potatoes and beets in the ground and room for a whole lot more. Who knows, before the summer is out I might even start thinking of myself as a vegetable eater.