You’re nodding yes to that title, aren’t you? A cool refreshing slice of Key Lime Pie. Maybe from limes you picked from your backyard tree. . . Or how about a freshly whipped coconut cream pie, toasty, creamy and delicious.

Those do sound tantalizing, but I’m not talking about those kinds of pies. The kind of pie I’m talking about is the thing that childhoods are made of (or at least mine). Kids today can operate phones and tablets. Me as a kid? I made mud pies.

Making a mud pie is much more difficult than it sounds. It requires finding mud of just the right consistency and color. It has to be smooth when water is added. Then you have to find all the right toppings to give the pie the perfect, enticing look. And then you try to feed it to your baby sister. You’ve been warned. If you see someone like me in the picture above trying to hand you a “pie” with “special ingredients,” you know what it is.

In my defense, research shows that dirt has great health benefits. Bacteria and microbes in the soil build up our immune systems, and it has been shown that soil bacteria have an effect similar to anti-depressants. So I was ahead of my time, and now I can tell my siblings that I was really doing them a favor by encouraging them to eat mud. I was trying to bolster their immune systems. Do you think they’ll buy it?

But you don’t need research to tell you how great gardening is for you. You know that it burns calories, allows you to move your body, and makes you sweat a little in a good way. It connects you to the earth with dirt-covered hands and gives you peace in a world that swirls around you. And if the soil bacteria want to beef up our immune systems and genuinely make us a little happier, that’s just one more ingredient in a recipe for an amazing summer in the garden.