Growing Like New Grass

in ancient soil

If it doesn’t rain, either my husband or I needs to turn on a system of sprinklers to water our lawn three times a day. We are tending a new lawn, and its seeds are a thirsty a newborn.

At first, I thought of it as a refurbished lawn, akin to a refurbished lawnmower. But little of the old lawn remains. Not even the topsoil, now about 300 wheelbarrows “lighter.” Mark removed that much to contour and flatten the ground.

The project began because three diseased ash trees were removed several years ago. Their stumps, which had been ground to only a few inches under the soil, kept sprouting shoots. Grass refused to grow over their footprints. We realized that our land needed help healing from those scars. So, Mark made it his early summer project. Now, tending it is a shared goal.

Countless times these past weeks, I’ve thought of the people who lived on our land before us. Not the names listed in our abstract or the county plat book, but the indigenous peoples who regarded the land as holy. A gift of the Great Spirit or Great Mystery, Creator.

I live on land taken from the Ioway (Siouan-speaking Báxoje), the Dakota (Santee Sioux), and the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), whose name now identifies the county and the largest employer of its county seat. I continue to regard this land as a holy gift. Each time I take my turn watering, I think of those who walked and tended to it before me.

Part of our lawn refurbishment included digging to uncover the three large stumps. Mark took on the task of digging 6 inches lower and 6 inches wider than the broad-reaching roots. We hired someone to, again, transform the stumps into wood chips, but deeper than before. Now, rather than only inches, several feet of soil (no chemicals) cover them. The hope is that they no longer send up shoots–that they merely maintain their vital role in stabilizing the soil and preventing erosion.

Despite losing their branches and foliage (maybe even grieving them), those stumps and roots have continued to shape the ground beneath our home’s foundation. I counted the rings that revealed their seasons of growth. The rings of each tree’s stump approached 100 in number.

Those ash trees did not exist when the Ioway, Sioux, and Ho-Chunk lived, hunted, and planted crops here. Instead, tall prairie grasses like Big Bluestem, Indiangrass, and Switchgrass grew on this land, up to 12 feet tall. The soil knows. I believe, somehow, the soil remembers.

Mark and I are now sowing something marketed as “turf builder.” We added some Kentucky bluegrass seed as well. Mark was born in Kentucky. He only lived there a couple of years before moving to a city in Illinois along the Mississippi River. His parents next transplanted him to Iowa at the start of his senior year in high school. They moved so his dad could continue engineering green tractors for farmers who needed more efficient ways to cut through the soil. Those farmers sow crops designed to feed us. We trust their role in providing our sustenance.

I guess the young shoots of grass growing outside our home are new. Yet, something feels incredibly ancient. Holy.

I see new growth every day. I see new shoots sprouting next to shoots that first presented a few days and weeks ago. I see the older shoots becoming thicker, stronger. Therefore, I see newness.

Yet, during my time to water, I think about what and who came before. When it rains and creation provides the water, I think about the earth’s cycle of life. Creation itself has sustained countless generations of humans and millennia of foliage and fauna.

I am but a trespassing caretaker who found a way to lay claim to a portion of earth I get to refer to as home. I, too, have grown here. At least I hope I have, drawing upon an ancient landscape inside me for protection.

I must continue to grow. I honor my ancestors, those who came before, by daring to become something new. My being draws upon what they left behind–invisible contributions as real as the soil beneath my feet.

I may be past 60 years of age, but I remain a thirsty newborn, drinking and reaching and crying out. In the Lutheran tradition, I recall, daily, the waters of my baptism–when bathing, drinking, or brushing my teeth. And, daily, I tend to the essence of my being, seeking what I need to keep being made new.

I am new grass in ancient soil, bathed in holy rain.