Item
Revitalizing Cultural Gardening
Title (Dublin Core)
Revitalizing Cultural Gardening
Disclaimer (Dublin Core)
DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.
Description (Dublin Core)
When the stay at home order hit, I was in a tailspin wondering what to do at home. I couldn’t imagine working from home and teaching my children might last from March to September. Something amazing happened. For over ten years, I talked and dreamed of gardening. I recalled my grandmother gardening when I was a child. She taught all of her grandchildren her indigenous knowledge of growing food from the land. Working from home and homeschooling during the day, allowed us to take breaks and walk to our yard for gardening. The location of our garden in relation to home, work, and school was very convenient.
Gardening allowed me to learn the different smells of dirt. The clay and muddy kind of dirt needed to be mixed with finer sand, manure and topsoil. The soil on my land was not sufficient for growing the plants I wanted. We worked early in the morning until the heat became too much to bear. Then we returned in the evening as the sun disappeared from the horizon. Our work included turning the soil, hauling in bags of manure and topsoil, and transporting finer dirt from areas around our home.
Once the dirt and seeds were ready, the watering began. I never believed water smells different at different times of the day and months. In the morning, the cool crisp water smells light and pure. During the hotter times of the day, the water smells musky and not as refreshing. It led me to wake up early in the morning and come out late in the evening to water my plants. The smell of the damp earth will forever remind me of the journey of revitalizing cultural gardening techniques taught by my grandmother.
Gardening allowed me to learn the different smells of dirt. The clay and muddy kind of dirt needed to be mixed with finer sand, manure and topsoil. The soil on my land was not sufficient for growing the plants I wanted. We worked early in the morning until the heat became too much to bear. Then we returned in the evening as the sun disappeared from the horizon. Our work included turning the soil, hauling in bags of manure and topsoil, and transporting finer dirt from areas around our home.
Once the dirt and seeds were ready, the watering began. I never believed water smells different at different times of the day and months. In the morning, the cool crisp water smells light and pure. During the hotter times of the day, the water smells musky and not as refreshing. It led me to wake up early in the morning and come out late in the evening to water my plants. The smell of the damp earth will forever remind me of the journey of revitalizing cultural gardening techniques taught by my grandmother.
Date (Dublin Core)
October 16, 0020
Creator (Dublin Core)
Shandiin Deputee
Contributor (Dublin Core)
Shandiin Deputee
Event Identifier (Dublin Core)
HST643
Partner (Dublin Core)
Arizona State University
Type (Dublin Core)
Text Story
Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)
English
Agriculture
English
Home & Family Life
English
Recreation & Leisure
Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)
gardening
mother
heritage
grandmother
soil
scent
COVID-19
Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)
Sensory History
gardening
COVID
cultural revitalization
Collection (Dublin Core)
Motherhood
Environment
Linked Data (Dublin Core)
Date Submitted (Dublin Core)
10/16/2020
Date Modified (Dublin Core)
10/16/2020
04/02/2021
06/27/2023
10/16/2023
Date Created (Dublin Core)
10/16/2020
This item was submitted on October 16, 2020 by Shandiin Deputee using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: http://mail.covid-19archive.org/s/archive
Click here to view the collected data.