Our author created a large garden and thought: “My will be done!”. Then came the humble realization: Nature cannot be forced. But love. A report from a gardener.

As always, it starts small, tiny. The first thing I sow in late winter, while still warm in the house, are tomatoes. A tomato seed weighs about three milligrams, it is as big as a small o in this text and just as fleeting, so sowing is pure precision engineering: open the seed bag with surgeon’s hands, dab one o after the other with a moistened pencil tip into a bowl of potting soil , sprinkle some earth over it, press gently, moisten the bowl with a fine mist and start breathing again.