I’ve been digging in my garden and talking to worms. This is what happens when someone gives you a rosebush and you read David Quammen. My favorite essay was written by Mr. Quammen. It is titled Thinking About Earthworms. He talks about Charles Darwin, whose last published work was The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations of Their Habits. How in our time we are subject to the noosphere, that place where we are all thinking about the same thing at once. Like the Super Bowl. Or the latest tragedy or scandal plastered all over CNN and The New York Times, and hashed out over facebook. And Mr. Quammen posits that it is a good thing if some people are thinking about earthworms instead (for example). Because you never know where your thoughts may lead, and we need new thoughts and paths to follow. Or we stagnate as a species.

A grad student gave me a rose bush in January. Before I can plant my Glamis Castle, I need to clear a spot for it. So everyday, I go out with my gloves, small hand trowel, and my U2 billed cap and dig a bit in the garden patch. Not too much, just a little a day. The neighborhood cat, Shoestring, usually shows up and hangs out with me, rolling on the concrete driveway, scratching her paws on old pieces of wood, and perhaps snoozing in the sun. And I consciously make sure I get dirt on my hands. Because I read somewhere that it is good for you to get all those microbes that are in the dirt onto your skin so they can become part of your own individual microbiome. I imagine I am introducing new microbes to my body in the same way new thoughts send the noosphere running for its life! New microbes add variety and diversity and help shield us from disease. New thoughts send us all running in different directions of imagining, and discoveries are made. Diversity rocks. And dirt feels good on my hands! And then I find worms. The little miracle workers who sift my soil and aerate it, and actually create the ground beneath my feet. Hooray for earthworms! They deserve my thanks!