Cullen: I Love to Dig!
September 3, 2010
Mark Cullen
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
An excerpt from: A Sandbox of a Different Kind: Personal Reflections on the Canadian Gardening Experience; Lone Pine Publishing, $14.99
Chapter 43: I Love to Dig!
“The best place to seek God is in the garden. You can dig for him there.”
— George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of The Black Girl and Her Search For God (1932)
I had the privilege of growing up with gardening. My dad, Len, had a passion for it that almost defied description. He was, after all, the only person I know of who kissed evergreens — all the time! Without apology.
One day in 1986, when I was barely 30, I took a walk with dad through the valley of his public show garden, Cullen Gardens and Miniature Village in Whitby, Ont. It was one of those lovely early fall days when the temperature is perfect to be outdoors. There were no bugs to speak of, which was really something in that mosquito-infested cedar forest. We just walked and talked. Him, walking with his favourite D-handled spade, and me, just trying to keep up the pace of both the conversation and the walk.
On most such occasions, our conversations revolved almost exclusively around business. Even the topic of gardening was always discussed in the context of the family business. So it came as a great surprise to me on this particular day when he stopped abruptly during our stroll, mid-stride. He bent down, took a stance that I had seen thousands of times before, and he began to dig. Right in the middle of the dirt path. One spadeful. A second. A third. Then he moved the dirt back into the new hole with the spade.
He slowly straightened his back, hand on the bottom of his spine for support. Slightly out of breath, he said, “I love to dig.” Then he paused. “I love to dig,” he said again. Then he looked me square in the eye and exclaimed in case I hadn’t heard him, “I LOVE to dig, Mark!”
Wow, I thought. My dad really is kind of nuts.
Expressing such passion over a basic thing like digging was unusual even for him. There was no doubt in my mind that he was good at it. There is a particular skill to digging. The position of your feet, the spacing of your arms on the shaft of the spade, the thrust of the blade into the ground, pushing your shoulders into it . . . all factor into a satisfying digging experience. Not to mention that the spade itself must be clean, and sharp as a butcher knife, and it helps if it is worn with use — the oils from your hands having smoothed the wooden shaft to a working finish. This is a tool without a price, because you can’t buy one. You create it through practice.
After our memorable digging experience, about 10 or 12 years went by. It took this long for me to begin to understand what he was talking about that autumn day in the valley.
Over that time, I had planned and planted my own garden — a few times. I had learned to take the time to slow down and dig my own soil. To smell it in the moist spring, the hot, dry summer and the coolness of autumn.
I had spent many autumn days turning finished compost into my garden soil. I rescued more than a few earthworms from the blade of my spade. And I would rest on the D handle of it after a good dig.
Time and practice caused the experience of digging to slowly sink into my being . . . until one day I got it. There is a great joy to digging soil.
Today, there is an English spade hanging in my toolshed that I treasure above all of my garden tools. It has a fine metal blade that holds an edge when sharpened; made of Sheffield steel, it bends rather than breaks when pressured. It slices through soil like a hot knife through butter. It is such a favourite of mine that it has appeared in more of my TV shows than my kids have. And they don’t make them any more (the spade, of course, not the kids).
One of the most difficult decisions I will have to make someday is which of our four kids I will leave this spade to. The spade given to me by my dad the day I left home.
Perhaps one day, while walking and talking about ordinary things with one of our precious children, or perhaps while digging, it will come to me. Just as my dad opened my eyes to something that I had always considered ordinary, the soil will speak to me.
And I will know just what to do.
Canada’s best known gardening personality, Mark Cullen, was inspired by his own children to write a book about gardening as play. The book features a chapter full of humour and insight for each week of the year. Mark Cullen is a best-selling author with over 400,000 books in print.