from you and what it gives back exist in a relationship that requires presence. I came to it later, trained as an accountant, drawn to the precision of numbers, and I had spent the first years here at the desk rather than in the field.
Then Richard died and I had to learn the whole property from the beginning, and I found, to my considerable surprise, that the work did something for me that nothing else did. That the specific attention required by a rose that needs shaping or a vine that needs tying or a drain that needs clearing
was exactly the kind of attention that exhausted the part of my mind that otherwise could not stop.
I trimmed the roses for two hours.
When I came back inside, my phone was lit and stacked with notifications like a building that has had something thrown at it.
Fifty-nine missed calls.
