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I like to garden in the rain,
just me with the weather,
fine mist first then
I pull the hood of my jacket over my head
and carry on in the downpour, digging
digging in what is becoming mud,
the wheelbarrow too
heavy on the wet lawn,
I turn it over and lean it against the fence,
find in the shed two large plastic containers
now nested full of perennial pots but which once held
baby fruit trees from the farm market,
fill the found containers with compost,
push and slide them
across the stone patio to my newest garden,
divide a clump of bearded iris, indigo and white, so multiplied
already in only one year’s time, unbraid the roots, tuck them in, taking care to expose the rhizomes, behind trailing rosemary I have rooted,
happy that rain is easing
their transition, windbreaker sticking
to my arms, jeans soaked from thighs downward
front and back, I am shivering, my boots and gloves a muddied mess, spray them hard and quick with the hose,
I am the one
cleansed by the rain, strengthened
by a day of digging, bending, lifting, carrying.
My ancestors were used to cold and mist and rains,
in their stone huts along the shore
might have had a hot mug of tea or whiskey or warm milk waiting inside, would sit me beside the fire,
would think me daft to be so willingly wet,
would pray I would not get pneumonia,
might admonish me to plant potatoes rather than irises and rosemary,
but the hardscrabble of my life is more in mind than stomach,
beauty is an elixir, physical exertion a balm,
the long hard rains
metaphor
and cure.
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From the Perimeter . . . 