Null Bloom

# Chapter 1: Dirt

The soil is cold this morning.

Not the cold that means something's wrong, the kind that means the earth has been holding the night close and isn't quite ready to let go. I press my fingers deeper, past the first knuckle, and feel the temperature shift where yesterday's warmth still lingers two inches down. There's a language to that gradient. Most people wouldn't call it a language, but most people aren't kneeling in their garden at dawn with dirt under their fingernails and nowhere else to be.

"You're leaning," I tell the tomato plant in the second row. It's the same one that's been leaning since last week. Not toward the sun — that would make sense. It's leaning north, which is where the well is, which means its roots are probably chasing water instead of growing deep. Lazy. "Stop it."

The tomato plant does not stop it.

I pack soil around its base, firm but not tight. You can suffocate a root system by loving it too hard, same as anything, I suppose. I build a slight mound on the north side, just enough to suggest that leaning that direction isn't going to be comfortable anymore. The plant will figure it out or it won't. Most do, given time.