Worms Give Me Hope

This is how I prayed today:

On my knees. In the dirt. Under a blue sky.

It was a warm November day. Too warm. No rain in the forecast. Again. Maybe we will have some closer to Thanksgiving?  There always seems to be rain in the long range forecast, usually about two weeks out. The weather forecasters are tricky like that. Maybe they don’t want Californians to worry too much, to lose hope, to start that slow descent into mass depression that we all suffered a few years back, when we endured year after year of drought.

Today, though?  The sunshine was bright and I enjoyed it in spite of myself.

This was the second year I purchased native California wildflower seeds with birthday money from my sweet in-laws. Last fall, I planted some in our front yard and then scattered the rest in a flower patch that I had just started out back. I confess that I was surprised this last spring when the seeds actually sprouted.  I always hope, you understand, but sometimes I doubt that the tiny seeds will turn into flowers, especially in my yard, where the soil has been neglected and weeds have thrived, where I am more likely to dig into the dirt and find nails and pieces of broken glass than worms.

This last year, though, my seed scattering was a success. I had a small wildflower patch pop up in my front yard, and California poppies and a few lupine in the back. The weeds were still there, but there were flowers, too.

Today, I went outside and scattered seed again: more California poppies, more  lupine, baby blue eyes, globe gilia, California bluebells. I found sticks and pushed them into the earth, marking where the seeds fell. Next spring when green shoots emerge, if they emerge, if there is rain, I will remember that these are wildflowers, not weeds. At least some of them. Odds are good that there will be weeds, too. But after working this soil for a few years now, I think I can tell them apart. Mostly. At least the worst offenders: the ferny burr weeds, the yellow sticker clovers, the foxtail grasses that lodge in my dog’s feet and ears.

But here is the surprise that I want to tell you about.

When I was on my knees, in the dirt, digging up a few old weeds, getting the earth ready for the new seeds? I found a worm.

A worm!

This in itself is a miracle.

Because many years ago my backyard was a place where people dumped trash. That’s what can happen, apparently, when you move to a historic gold mining town. Thousands of people lived here in the 1800s. There are only a few hundred now. At some point in the past, these residents decided that this particular patch of land would be a good place for a town dump. They tossed old metal tools, chipped plates, and broken beer bottles. It’s interesting, what my neighbors and I have discovered as we’ve dug. It hasn’t given me much hope for the health of the soil, though. In fact, it wasn’t really soil. It was just dead dirt, supporting only the hardiest of weeds and invasive plants. (Rob Bell’s November 3, 2019 podcast featured a beautiful conversation about the difference between dirt and soil, and how important soil is for our survival. You can listen to it here:  https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-vpxew-c5e932)

Except today? I found a worm.

This worm gives me hope.

Because in this place that was a dump, now there is life.

I give some of the credit for this transformation to my friend who owns a landscape company, who happily brought me piles of leaves that he collected from his customers’ yards.  He dumped them in a big pile in a corner of my yard and I basically forgot about them. Recently, when my son loaded them up in the wheelbarrow, so we could use them to mulch the flower beds, I was shocked to find the leaves had mostly disintegrated, and in their place, especially at the bottom of the pile, there was beautiful, rich, dark soil. Not dirt. Soil.

This is lazy woman’s gardening at its best. Ignore the leaf pile for a couple of years, come back, and find beautiful black soil. I did nothing  to help the process. It rained. It snowed. The seasons changed. The leaves dried out, got wet, dried out, and somehow over time, they changed.

Isn’t this another miracle?

Where there was a trash dump and dead dirt, now there are worms and soil and a few native wildflowers. Gift of the trees, of sun and earth, of rain, clouds and sky, on this sunny, warm November day.

This is where I found hope today.

This is where I prayed today.