After much procrastination (heck, I could have done this a month ago here in CA,) I finally got the garden tilled today. There's nothing like a freshly tilled plot--it's all potential at the start, as the scholastics might say, devoid of weeds, with some new topsoil and fertilizer raked in. An unplanted garden is a place for (nearly) limitless veggie dreams. Two questions:1. What are you planting this year? What do you hope for? I think, along with the usual tomatoes, zukes 'n' cukes, I'll put in a row of sunflowers just because. In recent years I haven't made good use of the corn I've grown, but you can't go wrong with sunflowers, eh? They're simple delight whether or not I ever do anything with the seeds.2. What's your gardening soundtrack? There's the classic "Garden Song" that starts "inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow," which is nice enough, though it has some puzzling lyrics. ("Pulling weeds, picking stones, we are made of dreams and bones. Need a place to call my own, 'cause the time is close at hand." It's a tad grim, as though the gardener expects to be, um, planted in his own plot. Or is it apocalyptic? Nah. Apocalyptic and gardening don't mix...) As I struggled to get the tiller through the thick layer of grass and weeds, I hummed the Doors' "Break on Through to the Other Side," and ruminated that "The First Cut is the Deepest" definitely doesn't apply to tilling. Got another good gardening/tilling/weeding song?

Lisa Fullam is professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. She is the author of The Virtue of Humility: A Thomistic Apologetic (Edwin Mellen Press).

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