Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

This is the fourth day of rainy weather. When it is not raining, it is so foggy and humid that nothing dries out. The ground is mush and springs are bursting forth everywhere. The rain has definitely kicked in the afterburners of the asparagus. We’ve been cutting a few spears a day for a few weeks now. When I went out this afternoon to check for shoots, I saw a bunch of them breaking ground, so tomorrow I should bring in a bundle-enough to roast for dinner again. We had asparagus today as well, but I love the stuff and could eat it every day. I wish there were a way to harvest it all year long. The rain is also quenching the thirst of the lettuces, as their leaves have also doubled in size. We had some of the mesclun mix leaves tonight with dinner. Within a week or so, I expect to be chopping up the first bunch of pak choi and harvesting the first head of broccoli. There are a couple of plants that were put out too early and have button heads, but I’ll just cut them and toss the buttons in salad and wait for the side shoots to produce more florets. I’ve got plenty of broccoli so a few plants with button heads doesn’t upset me. I love gardening.

As you know, our moniker is EarthNSky. I am Earth, and of course Skyguy is my better half. I am the most earthy, Earth-loving person you could imagine. For me, the soil, the clay, the earth is part of my being. When I say that, it is not a metaphor, it is what I believe. I’ll try to explain. In Latin, the word for soil is humus. Human, Humble, and Humility all share that root concept. When one has humility, he might prostrate himself to the earth, lowering himself to the ground, the base. I’m not religious, but I do know The Bible, and I am familiar with ancient texts that historically pre-date the Bible. In the Sumerian Creation myth, Adam is the new being, literally the Earthling, created from the Adama, the soil or the clay of the earth. The Creator, EA (EA ruled the Earth) took the clay and molded it, arranging it in his likeness, in his image. I happen to believe that the Creator was sculpting not just the clay itself, but the DNA within the clay, arranging it so that the Adam would be made in the image of the Creator. It sounds a bit far fetched for those who adhere rigidly to evolutionary theory, but consider this: The clay, the soil, the flesh, is the supporting matrix. The flesh is the tissue made of cells that hold the genes that contain DNA. Modern humans, homo sapiens, have 223 genes that other animals, including their predecessor hominids, do not have. In fact 40 or so of the genes are shared only with bacteria, prokaryotic acidobacteria from the soil. It is also possible that those 223 genes came from the ‘breath’ of the Creator. Furthermore, the genes came to humans not from some evolutionary inheritance from early bacterial life, but the genes appeared spontaneously from a lateral or horizontal transmission. This happened rather recently in the evolutionary history of mankind. This fact has stirred debate among geneticists, and has yet to be adequately explained. The origin of man’s existence is one of the world’s great mysteries, and if you compare the Genesis version of creation with the Sumerian version and other ancient myths, it is interesting that in most stories that ADAM was made from clay, from the earth. He was Human. You can believe whatever you choose to believe. Your Creator may be the Christian God, the Sumerian Enki/Ea, the Islamic Allah, some other Extraterrestrial Benefactor or maybe the Creator is just an idea and there is only evolution, but I believe that Humans were made from the Earth, and when they die, their bodies return to the Earth. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. By the way, that saying does not come from the Bible like people think. It is a suggested funeral rite in the Book of Common Prayer that is based on Genesis 3:19 which states (KJV) “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

People ask me about my weirdo beliefs all the time. I believe in both evolution and intelligent design. I don’t think they are mutually exclusive like some people do. I believe that both theories, as they originate from the human mind, are flawed and neither provides all the answers we seek, but together they do a better job of explaining what might have happened than either one by itself. When I place my hands in the earth, in the humus as I garden, it is a spiritual event. It feels much like a baptism, a cleansing, an act that unifies my flesh with the flesh of the Earth. I don’t think it is in my mind. It feels primal, and it may be just that in reality.

So now, as a gardener, I tend the soil, the humus, the earth and I eat the fruits of that soil. Those fruits feed my flesh, my clay, my body. Earth is my foundation. I am a steward of the soil just as I am a steward of my own body. If I poison the soil with pesticides and herbicides, I poison myself. When I finally die, cremate me and spread my ashes in the humus of the forest.

Knowing that there will be some people who will wonder whether or not humans really share bacterial DNA like I claim, I quickly googled the following abstracts as a primer. Feel free to do your own research with an open mind. You may be surprised at what you learn.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/292/5523/1903
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5765/1283