Waiting for the Sun
My appreciation for worms began at a young age.
I can’t give an exact date of origin, but I can say that one of the most exciting days of my fourth year was the time my parents’ basement flooded, attracting an influx of worms to carpet the floor. In the absence of such windfalls of wormy glory I would create and curate “worm homes,” designed to provide everything my wiggly friends might need to live a happy and healthy life under my devoted care.
So, it’s probably not surprising that within a few years of stable adulthood I decided to take up vermiculture—which, basically, is a more sophisticated version of my childhood worm husbandry efforts. Right now there are a couple thousand red wiggler worms living in a pair of Rubbermaid tote containers in my basement, turning my food scraps into the coveted material gardeners refer to as “black gold.”
As vermiculturists go, I’m not a very good one. A few years ago all my worms died on account of being left outside during a winter that included a full week of subzero temperatures. Sometimes I forget to check on them for weeks at a time.
But worms are pretty self-sufficient creatures. Even if you stop feeding them—for a good long while, really—they’ll just keep recycling the food you’ve already given them, which is a nice way of saying they will continually eat their own poop, and they’re OK with that.
That’s kind of gross, I’ll admit, but regardless I sure like knowing that they’re down there, especially during these cold months of the year when it’s been a while since the last green thing died, and it will be a while more before the first green thing reappears. They’re a reminder that spring is coming, that life remains, that there is still a need for fertile soil to birth the billows of greens and vegetables that make summertime so good.
When I closed on my house last summer, one of the things I was most excited about was the yard that now belonged to me and the garden that I could now create. But closing didn’t happen till July, and unpacking didn’t happen until a while after that, and before I knew it, it was February, and I’d had yet to plant anything at all. The force of my desire to see green things grow was inconsequential against the icy grip of winter.
That didn’t stop me from trying. Days before the calendar turned to March, I optimistically—though also foolishly—planted a tray full of seeds destined to become plants bearing tomatoes, peppers and various herbs. I set the tray before the sliding glass door, which I hoped would offer sufficient sunlight even during these absurdly short days, and I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Eventually, a few—and only a few—green sprouts poked their heads above my carefully prepared black soil. A greater number stayed below ground, stubbornly refusing to emerge. Even those that showed their faces grew slowly, or withered completely. They knew the truth. Spring was still far off.
They were smarter than me, apparently. I was so tired of being cold, of everything being gray, of the short days that precluded evenings spent outdoors even on the rare occasions when the thermometer reached a comfortable level. All winter, I’d had my eye on the spot in the backyard where I’d envisioned a vegetable garden growing since buying the house. But the darkness wrapped too closely around the beginnings and ends of my workdays for me to act.
Until March, when a sunny Saturday granted all the opportunity I needed to get to work. The site of my future garden was located in the corner of a fenced-in section of the backyard, the chain-link offering a built-in lattice for the tomato and bean vines that would surely spill out of the ground before long.
Unfortunately, a giant wisteria bush had already colonized the spot. The thing was massive; just how massive I didn’t realize until my boyfriend and I started digging.
“Digging” is really too gentle a word. This wasn’t any relaxed prod of the soil, done while sitting on the grass and pressing a trowel through soft dirt. No, this was a whole-body workout, done with shovels and pickaxes and a bunch of elbow grease. The roots were incredibly stubborn—thick and fibrous, long and seemingly omnipresent. It took two hours of mud and sweat to rip up a large enough mountain of roots to call it quits. There were probably more down there, we knew, but the vegetables would just have to deal with it. We were done, and I had my garden.
It wasn’t officially spring yet, but the first blades of grass had already begun to appear. I’d started a new batch of seeds, and while they also were taking their good old time to sprout, my worms had been working diligently all summer to turn apple cores and squash peelings into the kind of soil that would make all those discarded wisteria plants wildly jealous.
I smiled. The waiting was almost over.