The Detour I Almost Didn't Take

August thirteenth. There was a moment around four in the afternoon where I could have kept walking. The nursery has been on that block for at least as long as I've lived within walking distance of it, one of those places you pass so many times it stops registering as something you could actually go into. And then yesterday I just went in. I didn't have a list. I wasn't looking for anything specific. I said yes to it before the part of my brain that manages logistics had a chance to weigh in.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between what I answer and what I mean, Simone asked me something at the end of a session a few weeks ago and I've been turning it over since, so maybe that's why I noticed the moment I almost talked myself out of stopping. It was such a small thing. A detour of maybe twenty minutes. But I registered the urge to skip it, and I went in anyway, and that distinction felt worth paying attention to.

The part where I almost put it back. I didn't.

I came out with a small pot of rosemary. It's sitting on the kitchen counter right now because I haven't decided where it belongs yet. Gerald is in his spot on the windowsill, which is as it should be, I'm not reshuffling anything, not every new thing needs to mean something structurally, but the rosemary gets to exist somewhere. The standing order has a new participant, which feels right.

I took a few photos inside because the light was extraordinary and also because I'd apparently become the kind of person who wanders into a plant nursery at four on a Monday and needs to document it. That version of me. I want to keep being her more often.