W is for Worms

I remember summer evenings during my childhood spent peeking out of our kitchen window at the bobbing flashlights trained on our backyard. My cousins, searching for nightcrawlers for a fishing trip. I have done a bit of fishing (I once caught a puffer fish in the Florida Keys) but have never been a fan of baiting my hook. Worms. Ewww.

When I became a gardener I began to see worms in a whole new light. Instead of wriggly, slimy creature whose fate depended on me (would I choose them for the fatal mission of being bait on my hook?) they were my pals.

I started out with a garden made up of impossible clay soil. Even it I provided him with a miniature backhoe, an earthworm couldn't burrow his way through that soil. But as seasons passed and I dug, added, planted I noticed something. Worms! Instead of pulling away I would celebrate each sighting.

"Look at you! Glad you like it here."

Useful to fishermen (fisherpeople? fishers?), worms are even more useful to gardeners. And like fishers, gardeners will even pay money to introduce the right worms to their gardens. Although I've never done that, I appreciate it when a worm decides to call my garden home. Their movement helps aerate the soil and they help fertilize it with their...well, fertilizer.

So gardening isn't all pretty flowers and yummy vegetables. Sometimes its slimy and wriggly.