What the Garden Knows

The tomatoes don't care about your deadline. They ripen when they ripen, splitting red and impatient on the vine if you're too busy to notice. This is the contract you signed when you put seeds in dirt: the garden will humble you on its schedule, not yours. She comes out at dusk, after the screens have all gone dark and her eyes have forgotten how to focus past arm's length. The soil is cold now. The basil bolted weeks ago, gone bitter and leggy, reaching for a sun that sets earlier each evening. But the kale persists. The kale always persists. She pulls a leaf, eats it unwashed, tastes mineral and green and something like stubbornness. Her grandmother kept a garden like this. Never called it therapy, never called it anything. Just went outside every morning with coffee and came back with dirt under her nails and fewer worries in her face. There's no app for this. No optimization. Just the patient negotiation between what you plant and what decides to grow.