An island in the concrete

These are the days I love.

I am in love with the rain clouds and drops falling on the dirt. I am in love with sweaters and bright pink beets and the lingering smells of mint on my fingertips and wet pavement under my boots. I am in love with long shadows at 4pm and coffee in the evening (the prospect of staying up all night writing and thumbing through my books). I am in love with myself with no make up and bright eyes tromping through the farm in a skirt.

I went on a planting spree today. Broccoli and chard revealed their gossamer roots, radicals punching down into damp earth, spindly green reaching above. I pulled tray after tray out of the greenhouse and shuffled volunteers past the kale and favas to the struggling beets and lettuce and basil. Interplanting (its all love), filling in (low birth rate), replacing harvested crops (the circle of life). We were dusty with fish meal and flax meal, fingernails encrusted in compost, knees damp from kneeling next to coffee brown beds.

It felt good to get things in the earth. The sirens, the horns, the white noise of traffic on the 5, the chattering of students, the tall buildings casting shadows across rows of radishes and corn were all still there but I could barely hear them over the flapping of butterfly wings, the squealing growth of the caterpillars on milkweed, the grumbling of branches and banana peels turning into compost.

Sometimes I forget that I am in the middle of a city. 

I am surrounded on all sides by concrete. 

There are still ribbons of man-made rock snaking through the farm. 

Yet I stand grounded and happy on my island of rich soil on a cloudy, cool, transplanting-perfect day.