The chill of freshly broken earth crumbling beneath my fingertips will always bring me home. For as long as I can remember, we have had our flower garden sprawling across the rear of the backyard. It started out small, just a patch of irises and lilacs, and grew as I did, blossoming into a sprawling Amazon of vines, foliage, and blooms that would take up a fourth of our yard. Secluded by a canopy of reaching branches and vines, the garden is its own Eden. Walking along the path, gravel crunching beneath your feet and bees tickling your ears, is like walking into another world. The whirr of cars careening down our street melts away, replaced by sweet lilacs and lilting birdsong. Dappled sunlight brushes shyly across the pathway. It’s serenity.

           As soon as I was able to differentiate weed from plant (with supervision and regular advice from my mother), I was out in the garden helping my mum tend to the little lives she had grown. 

           With kid-sized gloves severely hindering my fingers’ dexterity and a shovel clenched in my hand, I would watch as she showed me how deep to plant seeds, and how to transplant from pot to earth. When worms would wriggle up from the newly broken soil, indignant that we had pierced our way into its peaceful existence, she’d cup them in her hand and tell me about all the good they did for the plants. The smooth cadence of her voice, coupled with the buzzing of insects and the chip of birds, seemed to blend into one pulsing entity. 

            “Worms are the sign of a healthy garden,” she’d say. “The more worms you have, the better you’re doing.”

            Carefully pushing aside some of the disturbed dirt, she’d put the worm back home with a gentle plop, scattering dirt back over it. 

            Whenever she’d find a worm or bug in the garden, she’d talk to it, thanking it for its work or apologizing for having to move it to another place. It’s something that I have adopted as well. I can’t help but talk to the bugs and animals when I garden. It seems wrong not to, rude in a way. Bees, worms, and snails continue to be our most common conversational companions. 

            Anyone listening in would hear a constant stream of, “Sorry snail, gotta move you. Don’t want you to get squished” and “Hello worm! Hi bumbles!” 

           Around the age of five or six, I was given my own small plot in the garden. It was maybe two feet wide and just as deep, but it felt like the world. Armed with the knowledge my mum had taught me, I was free to grow whatever plants I wanted, given they liked to grow in the partial shade of my plot. I toiled away in my garden, greeted regularly by our Black Lab Lucy and our Australian Shepherd Phli, who liked to hang out under the shade of the pear tree while my mum and I worked. The pear tree was situated directly across the gravel path from my garden, its thick branches granting a reprieve from the abrasive summer sun. 

            I carefully tended that patch, watering and weeding and growing sunflowers, daisies and irises.

            Later, the introduction of a sizable vegetable garden would expand our planting, as my younger sister would further expand our family. It set up shop perpendicular to the flower garden. Each summer, it graces us with an influx of squash, beans, tomatoes, herbs, and potatoes.

            Putting a swing into the flower garden was, I think, one of the best ideas my mum ever had. I spent so many summer days on that swing, reading and shooing away fat bumble bees who constantly mistook my bright red hair for a flower. Assigned summer reading books were always more bearable when read out there. And, somehow, Harry Potter felt all the more magical when read amongst nature. 

            Sometimes my mum or dad joined me and we would sit and talk and watch the birds and butterflies. Other times, one of our dogs would join me, curling up on the cushion next to me and dozing off to the steady rhythmic movement. But even when I was alone, I was never lonely. 

            If you’re quiet, and you sit on the swing long enough, nature tends to forgive and forget your intrusion. The birds flit back into the pear tree, singing and squawking. The hummingbirds play and fight, often zooming so close that you can hear the frantic beat of their wings. Bees, bums heavy with pollen, perch on nearby flowers. Butterflies and dragonflies glide through the butterfly bushes, the sunlight catching their wings. And with some luck, the families of rabbits that have made their homes throughout the yard come out too, generations of white tails and twitching noses. 

            I’m the person who saves spiders instead of squashing them, who finds exhausted bees and brings them back from the brink of death, their delicate legs tickling my palm as they drink in the sweet juice of a cut grape. I’m the person who can coax butterflies into landing on the tips of my fingers, and who has dragonflies perch gently onto my arms for a brief rest. I’m the person who feels most relaxed while in the company of animals, who even the most antisocial pets gravitate toward. I’m one who is deeply attuned to the reverberations of the Earth and the impact we, as people, have on it. I feel the fear and pain of other living beings as if the blows were to my own flesh and feel the decimation of the Earth as a fire burning in my own soul. 

            I am this person because of the garden, because of my mother, and because of the cool earth that so often pulsed beneath my fingertips. My being grew alongside the saplings and seeds, blossomed and was built beside the gravel pathways and wooden fences that cordoned off our patch of Eden from the rest of the world. And for as long as I may live, I am certain that the chill of freshly broken earth beneath my fingertips will call me home.

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Mollie Salamon is a Writing, Editing, and Publishing graduate.