The House Has Started Changing Too

This morning I opened the kitchen window and noticed a bundle of herbs turning slowly in the air above the table.

I hung them there several days ago because they needed somewhere dry with a little breeze.

At the time, this seemed like an entirely practical decision.

Now they appear to live there.

There are tomatoes on the sill as well. Four of them, all slightly different shapes, waiting in the sun because I picked them before they were quite ready. The smallest has developed a pale orange blush. The largest is still insisting upon green.

Four differently ripened garden tomatoes rest on a cottage window sill beside loose herbs, with a moving curtain and green garden beyond.

I respect its position.

Beside the stack of correspondence is a seed envelope I meant to label. I remember putting it there so I would not lose it.

This was optimistic.

It has since slipped halfway beneath a letter and become part of the general landscape of the room.

None of this is unusual on its own.

Herbs dry.

Tomatoes ripen.

Seed envelopes migrate toward mildly improbable places and remain there until discovered during an unrelated search.

A blank seed envelope peeks from beneath a casual stack of letters on a worn cottage table beside a herb stem and a little spilled soil.

But standing by the window, I realized the cottage looks different than it did a few weeks ago.

I have not decorated.

Apparently the tomatoes did.

There are stems on the table and a little soil near the door. The curtain keeps lifting toward the herbs as though checking on them. Outside, the garden is still thoroughly green, but pieces of it have begun appearing indoors anyway.

Not arranged.

Just accumulated.

A bundle hung where the air could reach it. A tomato placed where the sun could find it. Seeds set down with every intention of being dealt with properly.

One small thing at a time, the garden has begun taking up residence in the house.

I rather like it.

The cottage has always let the outside in. Rain comes through on boots. Moths visit the lamps. Leaves attach themselves to my skirt and travel farther than they had any reason to expect.

Still, this feels slightly different.

The garden is no longer only beyond the window. It is drying above the table, ripening on the sill, and hiding beside the correspondence.

The boundary has become a bit porous.

I think the house approves.

It looks lived in by more than one sort of life now.

I left the tomatoes where they were and tucked the seed envelope somewhere more sensible.

I have already forgotten where.