Hoosh, Hoosh, Hoosh
Prefer to listen?
After three years of saving and preparing, I was finally a homeowner. A small 950 square foot home. It was a mess and needed all the help inside and out. The back yard was full of dry and dead weeds mixed with the clay and red ground of Southern Utah.
I decided I was going to make it into something special and green. I had no real knowledge of how I was going to do it, other than how my father did it.
I bought a file and a hoe. I sat down on a bucket, put on my gloves and sharpened the hoe. I sharpened it as I had seen him do. I held the handle of the hoe between my knees while gripping the file with my hands on each end. It was a slow pull and slide. The file moved down and across the edge at the same time over and over with a soft repetitive metal on metal hoosh, hoosh, hoosh. The head of his hoe seemed to fade over time until he got a new one. He followed this process every time. I listened to the familiar sound coming from the metal in my hands.
I stood and began turning over the barren ground of my little back yard. One strong swing and crunch, followed by the slow steady pull of the hoe. After several hours I was mostly done. I moved to work along the block wall in the back. Working the ground, there was a small leaf and a dangling root that looked alive. Picking it up, it didn't look like a weed, and I thought maybe it would survive. After mixing potting soil into the ground by the wall I replanted it.
I brought a small glass of water to it each day and it started to turn a healthy deep green. It began to grow. There were three leaves, then five. Then it did the most interesting thing, it sent out tiny light green offshoots that started building new plants. Out of seemingly nowhere, I had three plants with leaves. There was nothing else happening, but new offshoots, plants, and more leaves popping up.
I mostly forgot about it for the winter and came back and sat down on my bucket with my gloves. I sharpened the hoe and started to turn over most of the yard again. When I got down by the wall, I saw my little plants. They looked hearty and strong. I was surprised that they had survived the season. I installed a basic drip system to water the plants for me. My plants turned a beautiful deep green again, new offshoots and new plants.
By the end of the second year, they were woven together. You couldn't tell where the original plant was anymore. Every plant was connected to another. Each one had put down roots of its own, but none of them stood alone. I had a thriving interwoven strawberry patch.
It was still another year before I had any flowers or strawberries, and the birds stole them quickly. But the lesson was already there. My father taught me to prepare the tools and the soil. The strawberries taught me the rest.
Love Emily