But in those first years in my urban garden, I wasn t yet familiar with the riches of composting. When my soil looked depleted, I purchased bags of live earth at the nursery to pour into planting pots or sprinkle on the flower beds. From time to time, I d throw a sac of store-bought composted manure onto the soil and work it in with a spade. Looking back, I realize I didn t care enough about dirt then to qualify as a true gardener. Gradually, I ve learned to love it.
Dirt is where it all begins.
Whatever endeavors we undertake, there must be fertile ground in which to grow them. So we mine our earth, hoping that there is enough stuff of significance in our backgrounds in which to root the work. The fear is always there. Gertrude Stein said, Painters do not paint the colors that their eyes see, they paint the colors of which they themselves are composed. Certainly it is not what anybody else sees.