A story about letting your soul shine & maybe eating your veggies…

I sit at the table and stare at my plate. It is covered in rice, gravy, pork-chops. You know the plate of a good ole “south of I-10” kind of girl. To combat that, I drag myself into the my gym clothes and hit the pavement. I work out purely so I can eat whatever I want and, at the bare minimum, stay one size. Lately the part of the yard where the garden used to be started mocking me.

When I met my Ben, in his backyard was this ten by ten patch of dirt. From the street you could see the tips of sugar cane growing. Who grows sugar cane in their back yard? Ben, Ben grows sugar cane. This made me happy. After the sugarcane came heads of cabbage, bigger than I had ever seen. We made copy cat PF Chang wraps, and with the last harvest of our winter crops came Sneauxmaggedon of 2014 in Baton Rouge. It was during the cold the garden was ready for a new crop and a soil turning. It was certainly too cold do so. So it sat. It sat for months…till Sunday. 

I woke up on the wrong side of bed Sunday. Just one of those moods. I had a bad case of the “don’t wants.” I had a bad attitude. I was tired. I couldn’t tell you why, I just was in a mood. I went outside with the soul intention of  letting the dogs out. That garden stared at me as if saying, “Yeah, I know. Today is not my best day either. Want to turn it around for me?” So I did what any rational 30 something would do. I started digging. I could hear myself saying in Dory voice, “Just keep digging, just keep digging.” I was in a bad mood, but I couldn’t let that garden go down like this.  

I would dig a hole and then dig another. I would replace the dirt from one hole with the dirt from another. I didn’t know how to turn soil, but this seemed like I good start. Before I knew it, the over-grown garden was ready for it’s crop. I had in turn gotten the best work-out of my life. My legs were burning. My shoulders on fire.  

I kept going. I could feel my soul shining. I looked up what seeds I could plant. So I planted. I made a giant herb garden in an old palette. I planted melons, corn, beans. I transplanted my lone tomato plant. I painted some garden markers. Then I moved pavers that were discarded and made a path to the middle of the garden. I felt accomplished. I felt sweat dripping down my back. My legs were covered with dirt and mud. My manicure was destroyed. But I turned that garden around. I made it something more than a patch of dirt. It was about the time that the rain started pouring down that Allman Brothers started playing on my iPod, “Soulshine.” 

I walked in and did what any other person in this society would do. I documented my success with a happy caption mistake. 

What my caption was supposed to say was “Soil Turned…Seeds Sown…Ice on Back.” When I read the caption later as I was instagram stalking everyone else, I thought, “I love this little bit of serendipitous miss-type.” If there was a lesson in any of this I took this away; good day or bad, right side of the bed or not, you have to keep digging till you find the awesome. You have to do what makes your soulshine. 

“People don’t mind. We all feel this way sometimes. You got to let your soulshine. Shine to the break of day.”