No, literally. Every now and then I have to dig all the chicken shit out of the bare-dirt floor of the chicken coop, break it up and shovel it into the compost bins, and then put down a layer of wood chips. So I’ve spent the evening digging out the coop, shoving dead wood into the electric shredder and then shovelling shit into the bins.
This week I’ve been thinking about things you can’t do with a phone in your hand or otherwise demanding attention. It was less of an issue when I was younger, because phones wasn’t as demanding but also because I was doing a lot of things you can’t do with a phone in your hand, like raising a kid. She’s been out of the house ten years now, and I shed a lot of constant vigilance with her leaving, and the Other World crept in around the edges. I started working on the garden, what, three years ago? And now I find myself suddenly surprised at how long I’ve been disconnected for. That ache in my hands is from shovelling shit now. And it’s going to make the plants grow/
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