I grow in a small 30 sq ft community garden plot, which I can only access from one of the long sides. I half-buried four bricks in the soil to have something to stand on, so I can get into my garden (and I do enjoy getting into my garden) and reach the back.
I use a very dense — occasionally too dense — planting scheme to not let any of my precious 30 sq ft go to waste, but this sometimes makes stepping on the bricks without trompling my precious plants a challenge.
Lately, I've taken to kicking off my flats and standing in my garden barefoot. Bare feet are much better at finding the bricks without smushing my tender lettuces.
Brooklynites don't go barefoot outside.
But I spent a childhood in the Midwest, running around outdoors slathered in sunscreen and almost never wearing shoes.
And while I am standing barefoot in my tiny Brooklyn garden, pill bugs—little terrestrial crustaceans that seem left over from the Paleozoic—decompose my compost as a mockingbird warbles a song it learned from a car alarm.
