The Garden Without a Clock

A root in the dark—
not seeking light,
but growing anyway.

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I’ve never called myself a gardener. It always felt like a title that belonged to someone with more tools, more patience, more botanical Latin. But somewhere along the way, I started noticing things.

The way soil smells after rain.
How a tomato plant leans, like it remembers the sun.
That if you place your hands in the dirt long enough, your thoughts rearrange themselves into something quieter.

I never meant for it to become a ritual.
But one morning, after a particularly sleepless night, I found myself kneeling by the planter box, just brushing my fingers across a patch of thyme that was threatening to die. I didn’t save it. I didn’t even try. I just stayed there. And something shifted.

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The Work Beneath the Work

People ask sometimes: what job would you do for free?

I used to think the answer had to be something grand. Writing novels, maybe. Or mentoring lost souls on mountaintops. Something meaningful, something big.

But now, I know:
I would garden.

I would weed and prune and fuss over basil that never grows quite right. I would plant things just to see what they become, fail to water them, feel guilty, and try again. I would spend a whole afternoon doing nothing but watching light move through leaves.

It’s not about the results. Gardens don’t ask for ambition. They ask for rhythm. They remind you that not all work is transactional. Some work just restores you. Quietly. Without applause. Like a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

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Wabi-Sabi and the Dirt on Your Hands

Wabi-sabi lives in the crooked stem.
The cracked pot.
The bloom that arrives too early and wilts before anyone sees it.

To tend a garden is to accept impermanence—
to work not in spite of decay, but with it.

You don’t win at gardening.
You just return.

To the soil.
To yourself.
To the small act of caring for something that might never say thank you.

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Lessons From the Garden I Never Meant to Grow

• The most honest kind of work is the kind that softens you.
• You don’t have to fix the whole world. Just water what’s within reach.
• Growth doesn’t always look like progress.
• Some things bloom simply because you showed up.
• There’s a peace that lives just under the surface. You find it with your hands.

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The world outside is always moving, always demanding a return on investment.
But in the garden, there is no hustle.
Only seasons.
Only stillness.
Only the kind of work you do because it heals something that language cannot touch.

And that, I’ve come to believe, is enough.

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If this post rooted something in you, consider sharing it. Maybe someone else needs permission to slow down, to kneel in the dirt, to do the kind of work that softens rather than hardens.