Notes From the Field

This month I've been in the beds. Hands in the ground, back low, doing the slow, unglamorous work that nobody posts about-- amending the soil before one single seed goes in. Lime. Bone meal. Leaf mulch. Compost and aged manure. Layer by layer, worked into earth that had been sitting there looking like it was ready but wasn't. It looked like soil. It felt like soil. But it was dirt. And nothing, not even the most resilient seed was going to thrive without intervention. The Di

It’s not my first time living in Richmond, but it is my first time living in the Bottom. Staying there, I quickly realized just how much we’ve built on top of nature, rather than beside it, or with it. Concrete sprawls endlessly, the sun bakes the streets in summer and winter freezes stick to the bare soil first. Green spaces exist, but mostly as decorative patches reserved for the people who can afford it. Everyone else gets “tan spaces” that look tidy but do nothing. Speaki