Eat The Yard

This objective has all kinds of oddities wrapped up in it – little efforts I never imagined engaging in, not even up to the moment of doing.  Take today, for instance.  In trying to reduce the percent of our property covered in grass, I spent part of the morning removing a rather modest square-footage from around the English Oak in our front yard.  As I tore out sections of grass, amid the roots and clods dozens of fat earth worms writhed in irritation.  I had just read about healthy soil, so I saw these night crawlers for what they were: decomposers.  Worms turn things like dead leaves into nutrients for living plants.  And they don’t even require any petroleum to do it.

I snatched up a few them and headed for the raised beds I’d built in the back yard, thinking that since they tower three feet off the ground it would be unlikely that any worms would find their way into them to keep the soil healthy — unless worms do things in the night that I don’t know about, crazy things.  I dropped one or two into each bed (some worms do not require other worms to make more worms) and watched as all but one found ways of tunneling into the soil.  This worm slid around from edge to edge, missing what I saw as perfectly obvious opportunities to dive under.  The soil had dried out in the desiccating winds that blow off the canyon behind our house, and the sun beat down, causing the worm to flip around violently and thrash against the surface.  I felt a strange sense of responsibility for the creature since I had abducted it.  And brought it to that box.  To work for me.

So, I unfastened the netting around the bed and reached in a finger to create a divot in front of the searching worm.  I then raised my hand and shaded the animal for nearly 10 minutes as it nosed around and into the hole and pulled the rest of its six inches in after.

Tags: raised beds, soil, worms