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I had no idea that there was a difference between soil and dirt. I grew up in a suburb where gardening consisted of transplanting a row of impatiens in front of your perennial hedges once a year. My parents both worked for corporate America. My sisters and I were raised with the understanding that we would go to college and then have a career with the word “administrative” somewhere in it. In short, offices and health insurance; a world where soil would not be a topic of conversation.
Ten years ago, when I was nineteen, my father drove me to Michigan State University for my first year as an English degree. I was starting on my way to becoming a technical writer. We passed State’s many fields and agricultural stations along the way, and Dad made the joke that I could always major in ”dirt.” We laughed, and it became a running joke every time he picked me up and dropped me off on my visits to and from school.
I never became a technical writer. I finished my degree, but in my last semester I discovered massage therapy. I was a Certified, career massage therapist before the year was out; and long before my father figured how his daughter had found and chosen this bizarre, unheard of “hippie” path.
In massage school I was introduced to the power of herbal remedies. From herb use I decided to train as a Master Gardener, and from Master Gardening came the decision to be a horticulturalist.
So here I am, full circle, back at MSU. But I’m not the girl I was then. I know what soil is, and have the deep respect and awe that comes from knowing that soil is not dirt. Dirt is separate specks of dust or grit or something else requiring a broom and a quick reminder to take off your shoes when you come in the house. Soil is a world. Mineral particles brought together and brought to life by microbes, air, insects, water, and organic matter that weaves itself into a constant cycle of deterioration and creation.
Dad drove up with me when I started in my horticulture classes, and the joke came back. I actually WAS studying dirt! By that time my Dad had begun to add some hostas and mums to his obligatory impatiens row, so the joke did not have quite as much of a patronizing and dismissive tone that it used to; yet the tone was definitely still there. I, of course, no longer thought of agriculture that way at all. I was not offended, though, and I laughed along.
With every month I’m here, I laugh less. When Dad first asked how my dirt classes were going, I was a good sport and just said they were going well. The next few times I heard it, I just ignored it. I didn’t want to correct him and, in doing so, come across as uptight or ridiculously politically
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correct. Still, I was irritated. I was acutely aware that soil is so much more than “dirt,” and the term strikes up an image that does not even skim the surface of the world we walk on, build on, grow in, and are buried beneath. Even when the dead of winter comes, and everything looks asleep at best and dead at worst, I think of everything under that frozen tundra, still warm and teeming and churning out life.
Dad has recently retired from thirty-five years as a finance manager for GM. He discovered that flowers are not just a passing interest for him, but a joy that he wishes he had found decades ago. He reads every gardening book he can get his hands on, and asks constant questions about every aspect of my classes. He’s read that compost is excellent for plants - how can he do it himself in his backyard? He’s afraid that he might have too much clay in the area where he wants to put roses. Is there a variety that can tolerate clay?
And then came the day that my father, of all people, asked about requirements for Michigan State’s floriculture program. I told him that the biggest requirement was classes in dirt.
Kathryn Noel Long, after graduating from MSU and then from Irene’s Myomassology, worked as a massage therapist for seven years. She is now a student at MSU in the Organic Farming Certification Program and plans to have her own organic vegetable farm within the next two years.
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