No Mas Mud

Where I live, from the sea to a bout 5 miles inland, is one giant sand pile. And that means there is no mud, no mud puddles, no mud to track into the house, no muddy tires on your car, no muddy hands while tending a garden, no mud period...

You might say, "Now, I like it like that!" That's because you've had mud all your life and you just don't appreciate it. Now, I haven't had muddy hands for several years now, and I miss it.

Mud is good. Without it, soil is bad. Ah, it's nice to walk along the beach, then just dust or rinse and your mighty clean, but try growing or building something without mud. I miss mud..

Here you can leave a water hose running full open on the ground and you might get a puddle 1 inch deep and a few feet wide, but it disappears as soon as you turn the supply off. And as soon as you do that, it returns to soft, flaky sand. Just like at the beach, you can build a castle out of sand, but as soon as you add too much water, or it dries out, it simply returns to what it was, just flat sand.

So to get anything to grow, or build anything in it, you have to make mud out of the sand. Now that's really hard and expensive to do. So, building that simple berm to hold the water around the base of your bush, or terracing a hill, is impossible because as soon as it all dries out, it flattens out. Everything must have some sort of retaining system to prevent the soil from washing away.

So, appreciate your mud. And when you come to visit, leave the mud on your shoes. I'll be glad to have it. But for now, I gotta go try and make some mud.. Imagine that!