Chronicles of a chinobilly gardening wannabe: Part 3

GOT DIRT?

There is nothing more reviving to a chinobilly as the smell of dirt.

And nothing brightened my day quite like running to the chinobilly greenhouse in the peacefulness of a spring morning to see if there is a wisp of green shoving its way out of the dark loamy soil. I needed the smell of dirt. Our neighbors started pulling their shades closed but I ignored that. Although, you have to admit that the sight of a grown, half dressed, wild haired woman huffing dirt has got to be unnerving to most people. Maybe this would explain why we currently don’t have any neighbors on either side of us…hmm...interesting.

Anyway if there's one thing I love about my garden, it's digging in it. It smells so rich, so life-giving, so...so much like bacteria?

No way! Waaaay.

Some of you smarty pants might know that the smell of dirt is not in fact the smell of dirt at all but a bacteria which produces a chemical which in turn is what we think of as “ahhh this smells like dirt”. *snoring Actually, the bacteria produces that smell when it is dying. In wet soil, it can’t breath and it suffocates. And that absolutely lovely smell of “dirt’ is the smell of dead bacteria. See mom and dad I really did pay attention in school!

Humans, and apparently all animals, are very sensitive to this smell. God programmed us to be attracted to the smell to indicate there is water nearby. Very handy for our ancestors that got stuck in the desert without a camel. Ha! It’s a symbiotic relationship really. We find water and the remaining living bacteria get a free ride out of a death trap on our boots to a new location where, hopefully, they will not die. Not a bad deal.

Of course now that you know this you'll probably stop reading my blog all together but for those of you who decided, for whatever reason to stick it out, it puts a whole new spin on my chinobilly garden. It is not a nursery for new seedlings now it’s a mass graveyard for bacteria! Lovely. Sometimes I can be a real killjoy…I know.

Oh well…it is the smell I will come to take for granted round about June, so use to it that it will be as normal as the smell of oxygen and horse poop (at least here in my little corner of the world). But right now, the smell is pure heaven and I’m off to weed my garden.

Happy trails!
The crazy bacteria huffin’ chinobilly!