I mentioned before that I moved away from the degeneracy that is so widely celebrated in our big Western cities. Currently, I am renting an attached house in a village. We have a small garden, a tiny one, actually. Overall, this patch of grass amounts to perhaps 30 square meters in total. This is obviously not enough space to have a crack at subsistence farming but you can at least dip your toes into this field. This weekend, we planted some flowers, herbs, and a few raspberry shrubs. At first I was just going through the motions, but I quickly gained an appreciation for this work. It is quite something to ram a shovel into the dirt to create a small hole, only to notice about half a dozen worms working hard at improving the soil.

Within perhaps ten minutes, I was done with transplanting the aforementioned plants into my garden and as I looked at the result, I felt the urge to get rid of all the weeds that had sprung up. One hour later, I had amassed a sizable pile of uprooted weeds — this is a pretty versatile word, commonly interpreted in English as meaning “exterminated” when translated from German. Looking at the results of my labor, I felt quite content. Now I am hoping that those plants will all pull through. Eating homegrown raspberries this autumn would be sweet as it would constitute a nice proof-of-concept.

There is a meme floating around in certain odious circles online: “Touch grass!”. This is a response some people get if they are sperging out too much. The implication is that you should get away from your computer or look up from your phone and get in touch with reality again. Touching dirt while doing some gardening surely has a similar effect. In fact, it is quite meditative, and if you have the chance, I warmly recommend it.