Five weeks is an eternity in summer gardening, and five weeks is how long I neglected the garden because of an injury. At some point, I stopped going out there because I couldn’t stop myself from trying to weed and clip, even when every movement was painful. Easier just to watch it from a distance and figure that if there’s one thing a garden doesn’t absolutely need to keep growing, it’s a gardener. I am there to impose my own order, but when it comes to growing, the garden does just fine on its own.

I could probably have hired someone, but that would have felt like an imposition – not on the person hired, but on the garden. On me. It’s my little patch to tend, and my little patch to let run amok.

So when I took a stroll around last week, splints finally off both arms, I was pleased to see that the garden does fine on its own. It might not be going in exactly the direction I would have chosen, but it picks its own path.

There were still a few gems here and there, just blossoming away, bees buzzing and birds singing, the weeds having a wild climb in forbidden places.

There won’t be the harvest I would have wished; the lettuce is shot and and the tomatoes a mess, but it’s still a fine little patch.

Nature finds a way, in gardens and elsewhere.