The Gym Will Still Be There Tomorrow

28.6.26

I’ve just come in from the garden.

Alerted only by the sound of my son starting his car on the way to work.

It is Sunday evening and I have been out here since before 1 pm.

These were tiny baby cauliflowers to plant out.

Alongside teeny Brussels sprouts and a potentially fabulous Romanesco broccoli that will hopefully fulfil its DNA and grow something like this.

(Thank you to a fellow Substacker Hudson E Baldwin lll for suggesting this seed. I just hope I’m not too far into winter for it.)

I am barefoot, wearing the Lycra tights I had planned to go to the gym in.

“I’ll just pop out here quickly,” I’d thought to myself.

Slipped into the garden void and three hours later, here we are.

Do you do that too?

Maybe it’s not gardening but something else that completely and utterly lets you slip into another dimension. Completely oblivious to time.

Once I’m out there, a hundred other jobs present themselves, begging for my attention.

The compost pile needs turning.

A mixture of food scraps, charcoal and ash from last night’s fire, weeds pulled from beds, last year’s corn stalks cut into small pieces. The pumpkin vines have recently been added and are beginning their grey, straggly disintegration.

First I take the pitchfork and begin moving the pile from right to left.

The top, which is freshest, makes way to the bottom of the new pile.

The dark, worm-riddled compost ends up on top.

Hundreds of worms.

Dark maroon, fat and active, they wriggle and squirm as I move them about.

I drop to my haunches to see them closely, occasionally separating them with a pointy finger, carefully holding them between finger and thumb.

Dropping them into my palm to examine them, they squiggle and squirm before I return them to the top of the pile.

They actively burrow downwards, safe from light, air and predators.

(Later, when I come back out, the kookaburra I’d spotted earlier in the week is sitting on the pole above the compost, watching and waiting for some easy tucker in the form of a worm.)

I silently thank the worms for their industrious work, helping transform organic matter into beautiful black, rich compost for my garden.

Tiny networks.

Decomposition.

Transformation.

The end product so valuable and so readily obtained.

Once the pile is moved and the new additions from my weeding added, I return to the new transplants.

How to save them from the biting faces of slugs and the very hungry caterpillars?

I return to the house and come back armed with shopping bags of glass jars.

My plan is to protect each baby with its own terrarium, effectively blocking out intruders. I place each glass jar carefully over each transplant. Hoping that they will be safe.

Then it is on to the row of basil that has refused to accept the onset of winter.

Each woody stem continues to produce leaves (though less than summer) and long, slender stems of flowers and seed pods.

Each tiny pod (there are roughly six at finger-length intervals along each stalk) contains up to four tiny black seeds (that also resemble the poo of a mouse).

Each seed contains the potential to grow a whole new plant next year.

Isn’t that remarkable?

One plant could keep you in basil for the rest of your life (and probably your whole family too).

It fascinates me that there is so much potential in each seed.

That each seed carries the DNA and memory of so many plants before them.

I wave my son goodbye as he pulls out of the driveway.

I begin to assemble the armful of basil I have snapped off to bring inside and create a final hurrah of pesto.

The tiny potatoes I found when pushing soil apart to deposit my baby brassicas.

The flower-like bunches of broccoli I’ve picked along with their leafy surrounds. (Grown during summer before I realised they prefer a winter climate.)

They stuck with me, thank you, broccoli.

Our Sunday dinner is to be based around this beautiful offering.

Me with tired leg muscles from bending, crouching, pulling and pitchforking.

The gym will still be there tomorrow.

Kylie, x