Few things indicate spring like asparagus.  It shows up when it feels right.  It doesn't consult a calendar.  It doesn't ask for special legislation or grant money to operate.  It just pokes through the soil and sends up its beautiful spire when its intelligence and data gathering services confirm:  "today is the day."

             Yesterday I refurbished our asparagus bed in the garden.  For those of you unfamiliar with growing asparagus (I hope everyone knows about eating asparagus) it's a perennial so these beds are more prone to weeds and grass incursions than beds of annuals where you're routinely preparing seedbeds.

             Too often these days my early spring and late fall, the two most critical times in asparagus maintenance, are taken up with traveling hither and yon preaching the gospel of creation stewardship.  So this bed, put in more than 20 years ago, was in a sad state.  It's only about 4 ft. X 15 ft., so it's not huge, but you know how it is when you know you need to take care of something but you put it off then it gets worse and a bigger job and then you feel bad for not getting it done when it was timely and . . . .

             Teresa and I both love fresh asparagus, so last week as we looked at the woeful bed and realized the asparagus had started growing but there was so much junk in the bed we didn't even notice, we knew it was time to take action.  So yesterday morning after moving the eggmobile I grabbed a spading fork from the back porch and headed to the asparagus bed.

             It took exactly one hour to get out the wire grass, the ground ivy and weeds.  Because we use copious amounts of rotted wood chips as mulch on our beds, the soil was almost like compost; loose and friable.  Much of the bed I just roughed up with my hands, taking out the little tiny early weeds.  You can't be too aggressive at digging around or you can hurt the tender asparagus crowns.

             One stubborn and massive clump of grass was so entwined with an asparagus crown that I ended up pulling up that crown as well.  Sorry, dear plant.  I carefully separated the roots and then put the asparagus crown gently back into the soil; it won't do much this year, but next year it'll be robust again.

             After that hour, the bed looked great.  It still had a lot of disturbed mulch on top, but it was clean.  I left the fledgling spires so they would grow more.  This morning I picked the asparagus.  With pan in one hand and knife in the other, I cut those fat spires at ground level and ate three along as I picked.  They had bits of dirt on them from yesterday's refurbishing effort.

             When you see asparagus in the store, it's about a quarter inch in diameter and of course days away from the garden.  Most of our spires are an inch in diameter and fresh from the ground they literally explode in your moth. 

             As I chomped and chewed on that sweet, crisp fat asparagus, nothing on earth seemed as important at that moment.  The sensation is sensual and soul satisfying, like "yes, this is real life."  The few crumbles of dirt around the base added some grittiness to the otherwise succulent asparagus, a deep earthy taste of rotted wood chips and earthworm castings.  I can only imagine my micro-biome bacteria leaping for joy at these long-lost soil cousins joining for an overdue visit. "Hello, cousin, where have you been since last year?"

             Winter is gone; spring is here because the asparagus told me so.  For whatever is not right in the world, nothing matters in that moment when spring knocks winter away in the ecstasy of sweet asaparagus sprinkled with soil nourishing body, mind, and soul.

             Do you grow asparagus?