Evening now, soft, still. Instead of staying indoors and attending to chores, I drive to where we are soon to build the long awaited family home.
Already planted, the orchard stands frail. Thin trees which promise succulence. Patience, be patient! Vegetables are flourishing in raised, oblong, tin beds, drawing me like a magnet.
I tend them. Lovingly, kindly, delightedly. Reddest strawberries, crunchy peas, beans, lemon balm and parsley. How now the progress of the green caterpillars gnawing at the pods on the radish plants? There will be seeds to collect if the caterpillars don't destroy them all.
The caterpillars have been allowed to gnaw unimpeded. I am informed by a romantic vision of re-instating the kind of balance that exists in nature between 'helpful' and 'unhelpful' insects. I indulge my delusion and ignore the fact that recently planted trees are mostly less than a metre high and offer no protection for birds, floral tit-bits to entice the bees are mere seedlings, and the grass is old, compacted cow pasture. I am buoyed by my vision of what it might yet become.
A kindly and focused man mirrored my own enthusiasm, 'You'd be amazed what you can do on five acres'.
Indeed.
Beyond the radish pods, the other vegetables are gorgeous and unchewed.
There is so much possibility, the wonder of it expands my chest, I feel my breath, my skin, my consciousness, opening to the billions of micro-organisms insects worms that help make up the living breathing masterpiece that is the soil. I am learning how to feed it, to mend it, to read it.
I am alive, it is alive.
I am in love with the possibilities.
