At a recent estate sale, I picked up a slender green leather volume titled My Summer in a Garden, by Charles Dudley Warner, Cambridge, England, 1896. It is a very Edwardian essay, but although flowery, it has a nice message! I am going to quote the first paragraphs. (Change the pronouns to suit yourself!).
“The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt and sown wild oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind in all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground and stay there. To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do ... The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.”