Planting Such a relief to be banished to the garden even now, in winter. Setting down earlies and other roots whose names I hadn’t known celeriac, Jerusalem artichoke, the trowel broke ground but my fingers did the planting: vegetables for the cauldron in the kitchen, flowers to dress the visitors’ parlour or the altar, gypsophila a favourite. Stone walls giving shelter, shifting sky above, a neglected patch where nothing grew black soil, the heartening smell of earth. It was the garden that grew love in me again. Patricia Anne Moore
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