there was a time when my daily life consisted of all day, outdoor, sweat-dripping work. i love this type of work. the type of work during which water is evaporating as quickly as it is soaking in. the type that requires clothes to be peeled off to step under a cold shower at the end of the day.
these past few days, we’ve been building rock walls, moving around and smoothing out dirt, creating food gardens and spreading pounds and pounds of native wildflower seeds—a vision that we’ve been brewing up for a long while and are so excited to see take shape.
it’s been a longtime dream of mine to work with several acres of land, to grow food, to cultivate the kind of closeness with this home space that i long for in all of my relationships. this intention has stood strong and steady for as long, it seems, as i have been casting out intentions…and then a small village lured me in and pulled forth the kind of love that i can’t quite walk away from—that i don’t want to walk away from.
i don’t know that we’ll always live here, but, for now, we do—and my relationship with this small piece of land is deepening.
thinking back to the long hours that i used to spend outside—at the farm or arboretum during college and, later, in the orchards—i can’t recall my body ever feeling tired. today, however, my body is just tired enough to let me know that it has gathered years of experience.
it is a good tired—a welcomed tired.
now, with the sun setting, i am stripping off clothes to step under cold water—
with a familiar sense of sweat-drenched fulfillment,
a remembrance of a stretch of life that i hold dear…
and the celebration of a life that continues to feed and to be fed.
food garden plotting.
it’s a family affair.
i would claim that hours of raking, seeding and strawing made us extra funny or created extra laughs…but this is pretty much what every day looks like.:)
handing the rest over to nature. she does good work.