Dear friend,
Intimacy has been on my mind as of late. Not just that type of intimacy, but all types. Like friends who know where my silverware drawer is or share memes with me that they know hit at a hidden piece of me few people know.
In a hot, sticky lull over the weekend, Stuart and I sitting beside our little pool, he glanced my way and scanned the exposed forty-year-old flesh peeking (squishing?) out from my swimsuit, smiling. Part of our intimacy lies in him knowing what’s underneath. Monty Don, one of Britain’s most prominent gardeners, famously said that his favorite scent was the “nape of his wife’s neck.” Intimacy indeed.
Our children also live intimately intertwined with us, knowing how we take our coffee and what we look like in our pajamas. Just like me, they’ll grow up knowing the shape of their parent’s fingernails and catalog of jokes. They’ll know the tendencies of the family dog, the smell of the dank root cellar that sits under the kitchen, and the feel of our home at midnight when all guests have gone and just us remain.
When our church sings Psalm 23, eyes inevitably welled with tears, I purposefully offer a smile towards our dear friends. Their daughter died and we sang this Psalm as she was buried. I’ll never not think of her as the melody dances amongst the pews of Saints, many of whom aren’t aware of what such a Psalm means to them in particular. I’ve seen them weep and mourn, I’ve seen them grieve through the deepest of valleys, and I’ve also seen them rejoice. Together, we’ve traversed birth and death — and yes, I know where their silverware drawer is.
This is intimacy. And it is a rich gift.
Perhaps this feels a bit of a lofty introduction to my whole point in all of this, which is to take you on a massive photo tour of my garden (I think I counted over 60 images!), but in this particular moment it feels intimate and tender to me. Perhaps I’m feeling a bit tender. We are now in our tenth summer with the garden, a garden that was simply a field of grass a decade ago, and I can finally see how the intimate hands of the gardeners, our hands, have created an external piece of our hearts.
If you were here in person, I’d show you around, and internally be reminding myself to not apologize for the weedy spots or the rose that needs trellising. I’d have to fight the urge to tell you of all my plans, showcase my sunflower collection that will soon come into bloom, explain the bare spots where weather or misfortune has left us without, pluck up weeds as we walked along, and confess that most of our vegetables are currently being bought from our neighbors as we continue to build our new veggie patch close to the house. In my garden, after all, you’d see authentically into my wild and true soul. And baring one’s soul can be quite intimate indeed.
I hope you find the photographic tour of our garden lovely. Welcome to my favorite place in the world.
Love,
Try The Cooking Community free for 14 days
If you love cooking along with me, there’s plenty more where this came from. Join home cooks from around the world for new recipes, instructional videos, kitchen inspiration, and good conversation. Start your free two-week trial here.
