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I am in the backyard this and every morning because I have an uncontrollable itch to shove my fingers in the earth. The soil is solid and firm, and when I am inside it, I feel solid and firm too.

Sometimes I feel like I am only half here.

Sometimes I feel like my body is a collection of feathers that could fly away at any moment.

Is it wrong that I get a kind of morbid glee when I deadhead the flowers? The dense click of my shears as they split off a dying bloom is probably more satisfying to me than it should be. I really like the gardening, but Ilove the payoff. I take pictures, and after I’m done puttering around the garden it reveals something new and beautiful every day.

My first stop is always the shed, where I grab a large trash bin and the rest of the tools I’ll need—various spades, a rake, a trowel, and the aforementioned shears. My camera is hanging across my chest and slung over my back. One of these days I am going to break it beyond repair because I treat it like an old sack. Then again, photojournalists take pictures in warzones dodging shrapnel. If I start treating my camera like it’s made of glass, I will for sure miss a great shot.

My mother (as she loves to point out) bought me this camera. She’s out of town so I don’t have to worry about her telling me for the umpteenth time how my camera belongs in its well-insulated bag. Even if she was home, it was the previous owners of this house that made this glorious garden. My mother rarely steps foot in it.

When the weather is nice, my sisters might help out with basic maintenance, but as soon as the sun disappears, so do they. Ana will watch TV while sketching a design. She might even cut a pattern right on the kitchen table and begin to sew pieces together on our avocado-colored machine that has been in the family since before our mother was born. Ana can and will do many things at once.

Since Etta is the chef in the family, the vegetable patch in the garden is hers, although she tends to it without pleasure. She enjoys the spoils, but she complains out loud (to herself? Me? The Garden Gods?) every single time she pulls a weed. For the most part, the three of us are house cats.

Besides the vegetable garden, there are four more formal boxes—two are filled with spectacular roses with names that always make me smile: Duchesse du Brabant, Papa Hemeray, Marchesa Boccella, Sweet Peg, and my favorite, The Undervale, a rose the color of a creamsicle sunset.

One other box has violet and plum-colored hydrangeas, and the last one is for annuals. At the bottom of these boxes is a healthy crop of wildflowers that require just the right amount of weeding. If I pull up too many, it will lose all sense of abandon.

Beyond them is a long full stretch of grass surrounded by massive oaks and maples. The grass ends abruptly where our property butts up against a dense thicket of woodland.

The first thing I do this morning, as always, is bury my fingers in the ground. I let the dirt collect in my nail beds. I wiggle and push until the earth chills my entire hand. A great sigh of pleasure escapes my throat.

When that is done, I bounce down to the grass and rake the leaves into a pile. There are surprisingly few given the season and the wind, which is gusty enough to make my nose cold.

Eventually, I look down at my progress. There are claw marks in the grass and a few brilliant crimson leaves scattered between the gauges. I stare thoughtfully at the earth. The turf h