Yes, I like to play in dirt

So, I was outside the other day snatching a couple of free hours to get some containers potted up. It's been amazingly hard to get any gardening done this spring with all the other things going on in my life.

And yes, I had potting mix sprinkled pretty liberally around the patio and sidewalk. That tends to happen when you are potting up a lot of large containers from a big bin of Scott's potting mix (I didn't make it to Pesche's this year for their good homemade stuff) combined with cotton bur compost. I had a bottle of Neptune's Harvest liquid fertilizer around to mix up in a watering can to douse each planted pot, heavy on the fish and kelp emulsion, and yes, it smells a little ripe.

And yes, I was wearing my gardening gear, consisting of jeans and T-shirt long ago irreparably dirt-stained and therefore condemned to be gardening clothes forever, and my grubby gardening sneaks, and a pair of thoroughly wet and mud-soaked gloves.

And yes, there was some water sloshed around. Didn't really make mud, because decent potting mix has too much organic matter to become serious mud. But there were some puddles of wet potting mix around. Tends to happen.

A neighbor came along, headed for the parking lot. She tiptoed around the potting mix, fretfully, with an annoyed expression. "I'm looking for a place to walk and I can't find any place to walk!" she complained, as if a little potting mix were sulfuric acid that would eat through the soles of her shoes. "I'm not like you! I don't like dirt!"

What did I say? I laughed, of course. Then--having been all too well brought up--I'm afraid I started to mutter "sorry" under my breath before I stifled the reflex. I did not offer to sweep the sidewalk, nor to strip off my T-shirt and spread it over the potting soil like Sir Walter Raleigh. So she minced her way to the gate and flounced off.

Hey, I do like dirt. I like the things that grow in dirt, including my food (and my neighbor's). I like the smell and I like the texture and I like knowing the difference between good dirt and lousy dirt.

I like the things that live in dirt and turn it into soil, like microbes and nematodes and roly-polys and springtails and earthworms. I like feeding them leaves and compost and other stuff to help them make soil from my dirt. I like digging in light, rich soil and knowing I helped make it happen.

I like the things I find in my dirt, such as old drainage tiles and square nails that remind me this was the site of an old Victorian house that was torn down to build our apartment building in 1924, and the flagstones that turn up to hint at the dreams and designs of gardeners long ago.

And I like filling pots with soil--not dirt--and stuffing them luxuriantly with the plants that will make the garden and the patio I share with my neighbors more attractive for us all. Sometimes that means creating some potting soil fallout for a few hours before I get it swept up. Sue me.

Or better yet, give me a T-shirt that says, "I love dirt and the things that live in it." I promise to get it irreparably dirty right away.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.