BEING LIMINAL

I’m kneeling in loam. I have been here for three hours now bent to face the earth, my fingers raking, sweeping and grappling at her skin, plucking stray detritus from her back. It’s grey today with the last hoorah of the old ones scattering the sky and scrappling up the edges of paths to congregate in reddening/gold corners by the steps. The first proper sharpness is hanging on an air that is holding so much potential of water, it seeps without seeping tiring wearing joint sockets of ageing gardeners scrabbling about in the mud.

There are a few visitors to the garden today hardy in rain-macs and bundled in scarves. Late season visitors I’ve found tend to take more time, they’ve dropped down a gear to reflect the nature of the autumn. They meander, often lost in their own internal dialogue stopping occasionally to catch a glimpse of late colour or embalm themselves in Cercidiphyllum japonicum toffee-apple scent and wonder at its source. Warmth is leaving us. Roots of Kingdom Planteae will sit and wait it out. The living and the dead bits of phyllum Chordata will still busy ourselves working, or returning.

The view of me is of a middle-aged human kneeling, or occasionally stooping in the plant bed doing a final end-of-season cut through and weed, knee-padded, bucketed and horn-hori knife bedecked. I look as if I may be bored, or angry, frustrated or just getting on with the job. The reality is that a spectator of my days work is witnessing a time-traveller in action. I am rarely weeding. Mostly I am reliving memories or re-setting life events, or re-imaging a whole other existence as a whale or a tribesman or a lottery winner. I am planning for events that may or probably won’t, happen. I am re-inhabiting dreams and contemplating their meaning, I’m thinking of ways out of the system, ways into the system, ways to fix the system, ways around the system, ways to fuck the system. I am inhabiting the liminal spaces. I dwell sideways. I’m present but gone.

This is the act of gardening to me.