September 26, 2011

treading the good earth



it has been saturday afternoon and evening, when joel and i were bringing the good earth from the driveway around the house to the chicken pasture to be. we both got blisters on our palms and saturday afternoon was hot, there was lots of sweating going on. but it is done now, about 50 wheel barrows have been dumped on the empty patch of not really any thing yet. we didn't get to spread it out evenly or smoothen it yet, that will have to wait until a moment can be stolen away to do so. and then the grass seed, everything should be out before the cold hits, in order for the seed to germinate before winter hits...

the fun part was on sunday afternoon, when i noticed that the girls spent long moments to tread around in that uneven patch, they both loved the feel of the cool soil and could not be stopped to feel the good earth. it was then as it dawned on me, that good earh must feel great is somehow soothing and fun to walk on. of course then i also remembered how much i liked to run up and down the field, when my dad plowed and dug up the harvested fields. finding all kinds of lively beings crawling and looking to dig down again into the dark. in autumn when the the plow went through, the steam was rising from the warm soil, as the air was already cooled down. seeing the bare feet on the fresh earth made me once more happy and thankful, for the space we do have around our house in the city. thankful for the opportunity our kids have to connect with the very earthly matter we live from.

1 comment:

Cindy Lu said...

That looks so fun! I was thinking that maybe you could use a papasan chair frame for the swing...I don't know if you have them in Switzerland, but around here they're super easy to find used for like $20. Maybe if you sealed it with polyurethane it would work for outdoors.