“How it feels to be back [in the orto]”

I’m back.

Able, after months and months, to whisper my belly-aching love for this orto, directly to the orto itself. Don’t get me wrong - professing my orto-love to you all during the past months has been a nice stand-in. Thank you. This is different, though. This feels like an arrival.

How many worms have I touched this week? Too many to count. I turned a full bay of compost (often elbows deep. I love a compost pile). The worm-count doesn’t really matter. It’s that contact that counts. I know well that it will be days yet before I scour all of the soil out from beneath my cuticles. It’s not an elegant or refined look, but I finally feel like myself.

Despite finding myself at home in gardens, returning to those that are (in some ways) mine always takes time. I have to reacquaint myself with the space, with the plants, with the way the sun moves, with the breeze, with the trees. Low branches catch my hair as if reintroducing themselves with a begrudging nip. Wordless accusations of me having forgotten them. I concur. I faintly recall that I used to dodge them intuitively.
I forget the spikes and slivers that snag my wool jumper*. Have they moved, or have I misplaced an awareness?

I get to work reacquainting myself by walking in circles. ‘Round and ‘round and ‘round. Slow laps around the garden. Clockwise, then counter-clockwise. From the sky I must seem mad. Every few paces I stop:

A callused mushroom gripping a trunk.
A fallen pear softening into the ground.
A patch of wild mint I must have spared during my last excavation.
Did someone throw an old potato out of the upstairs window? It’s eyeing up beautifully. I should plant that.

I look forward to coming back, but each re-entry makes me feel like an imposter. I become a stranger returning late. I enter carefully, all but tiptoeing, as if the space might not recognize me anymore. I feel a quiet shame in it. The sense that I need to earn my place again.
To demonstrate competence.
To convince the garden to trust me.

Let me shape you, I think. I know what I’m doing. I really do.

Eventually, something releases. Not thought, more muscle memory. A knowledge stored in the body, somewhere near my heart, I think. My shoulders drop. My jaw loosens. I roll up my sleeves without deciding to, even if the January air nips.

There is always work to be done in an orto. Even the most unruly ones ask for attention.
Not control.
Just presence;
consideration;
and appreciation.

I’m back.

*I’m Canadian. I don’t say jumper - but Sara does. I like the word, so I’m trying it on to see how it feels in my mouth.