Turning Up the Dark

April 19, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep This is about the time of year I start writing about spring and gardening and the anticipation of warmer days. And hope. But just because the earth is stretching and ready to start a new day doesn’t mean we are. As much as I’ve been thinking about what to plant in my flower pots, […]

Planting gardens in us

August 24, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep I pinch seeds like fuzz from a winter coat. It is the last day of visiting my cousin. Every one of his homes has seemed a retreat to me. He incessantly has his eye on some dilapidated structure full of hoarder treasure or bat guano, yet he somehow sees past the cracked […]

The work of her hands

October 28, 2013.Reading time 1 minute.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep As a child, my grandmother worked in the truck patches of vegetables her family grew on their rented farm in Southern Illinois. Whether from planting or harvesting or picking off bugs to drop into buckets of kerosene, the calluses that lined her palms like small pebbles were a source of pride. […]

Everything turn, turn, turn

August 17, 2013.Reading time 3 minutes.

I used to watch that 45 rpm record spin on the turntable, the green apple label a blur as Mary Hopkin sang “to everything turn, turn, turn…there is season, turn, turn, turn…” And as my garden finally starts to yield fruit at the far end of this cool summer, a change of seasons is obvious in […]

A mother’s ode to wayward green children

July 10, 2013.Reading time 4 minutes.

As I dig in the dirt and plant seeds, yank weeds, water and watch things grow, I can’t help but consider how gardening is so much like raising children…the trials and the joys. I’m disappointed in my tomatoes. I started them from seeds. Watched amazed as they poked through the soil and cheered them on […]

Putting Down New Roots–in dirt and in life

March 29, 2013.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep Have you ever been transplanted? I was following my divorce in 2005. I couldn’t help but see an analogy today as I was transplanting the delicate seedlings that more quickly than expected outgrew the mini-starter trays. A few weeks ago I started seeds for kale, two varieties of tomatoes, hot peppers, and chamomile. The kale […]

Spring has sprung in my kitchen

March 21, 2013.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep Last week, I filled out a planting schedule I found on Mother Earth News and started my two varieties of tomatoes, hot peppers, kale, and chamomile. I scheduled what to start indoors and when to transplant, and what seeds to plant directly in the soil and when. I would have posted […]

True Grit is under your fingernails

December 30, 2012.Reading time 5 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep The bunny is looking at me with black eyes from it’s fuzzball face. My heart begins a slow melt that seems to move to my mouth, which turns down at the corners, the lower lip protruding in a “that’s so cute I could cry” pout. My daughter and I have wanted […]

Knit from Dirt

January 26, 2011.Reading time 5 minutes.

[In anticipation of the end of winter–yes, I start anticipating early–I’m sharing something I wrote last spring. Ah, spring…] He made us from this. This darkness, this ancient batter of living and dead and living again things. I like that God made us from dirt, instead of from nothingness. I like that we walk earth’s surface until […]