Real Men Get Dirty

I trust the sun will be shining as you read this missive; sugar snaps flowering and the first sweet leaves of buttercrunch emerging. Writing at February’s end, I peer outside and stare down the sleeting finale of a winter week of snow and frigid record cold. I’m wedded to the couch, sinking into the cushions and depression; enveloped in melancholy. I despair. Images of worms, playfully cavorting in the loam, exit my consciousness, replaced by visions of their siblings drifting inertly in bottles of tequila. “Listless” would be a grossly overactive adjective to describe my outlook.

The advent of a new year produces onslaughts of commercials touting fitness gyms and male performance clinics. They permeate the airwaves with the frequency of election season sound bytes. I’m besieged by reputable(?) doctors explicating why I haven’t had good sex since 1995; imploring that with their $99 treatment I will also shed 35 pounds in three weeks. (despite my Graeter’s addiction).

I acknowledge that I’m not what I used to be, but the emasculation of raising four daughters and a winter weight gain courtesy of my worldwide tour of mac & cheese affords mitigating rationalization. I ponder my quandary; then suddenly, faster than a raccoon stripping a fig tree, enlightenment ensues and despair disappears: I don’t suffer from Low T. My infirmity is No D. I need DIRT, or at least a new garden magazine.

In my former life I remember waiting impatiently each February for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Nowadays that need is supplanted by the anticipated receipt of the Baker Creek Seed Catalogue (both publications contain page after page of beautiful pictures but I believe Baker Creek airbrushes their melons).

Louisville’s gray winters drearily draw out. Days of sunshine and mercury topping 40 sporadically interrupt weeks of climatic incarceration in the Ohio Valley’s frosty haze. On these rare junctures of radiance I’m aroused and head to the garden. Seeking the pleasure that only the first turned earth provides, I grab a spade and thrust it downward … only to bounce the blade off the frozen tundra. The bone-rattling jar, akin to a sculled three-iron, pulses my arms from wrist to shoulder. Pain and disappointment; premature shovelulation. Crushed, I limp home and slide couchward into supine sorrow. A seed catalogue and fantasies of variegated heirlooms will have to suffice.

Gardeners discern that dirt cures depression. Sunny spring days are gifts, engendering a siren’s song to touch soil. Surrounded by darkened clouds, I can literally dig my way from anguish to contentment (if my back doesn’t give out on the journey). Digging is cathartic, stirring deep-rooted memories as well as the dirt: seeds sown with my Grandfather; loamy chocolate soil reminiscent of Aunt Martha Ward’s wonderful cakes. Tread carefully about the turned earth; avoid compacting the soil … and stepping on graves. Turning over a spade full of earth and seeing the worms darting through the soil kindles incredible energy and uplifts the spirit.

Get dirty, it really is the best medicine.