Hello from the back gate.

I garden behind a modest Bloomington house, where the path is a little uneven and the best place to sit is a low step near the back door. I came to gardening through kitchen herbs. A pot that survived my early inattention made me curious enough to try a second one, then a small bed, then the three I have now.

I enjoy the work that can be done in a short, focused visit. Ten minutes of checking leaves or clearing a path fits an ordinary weekday. Longer tasks wait for a weekend when I can bring a thermos outside and accept that my clean trousers were an optimistic choice. The garden has made me less interested in finishing everything at once.

My seed drawer began as an empty stationery box. It now contains folded packets, an index of what went where, and a few envelopes labeled with questions rather than answers. I do not save everything. I choose a manageable number of plants and keep notes detailed enough to remind me why those choices seemed sensible.

Friends sometimes ask whether the notebook takes the spontaneity out of gardening. For me it does the opposite. When the practical details are written down, I can spend more time noticing a new leaf or watching the way rain moves through the bed. The ledger holds the memory so I do not have to carry it all outside.