Adam JacobSunday and the Art of Doing Very Little
Gerald's daily dispatch for Sunday, May 17th: a warmer morning at six point four, clear skies persisting over the Shire, the broad beans making their case for stakes, and the deep hobbit satisfaction of a day with no agenda that somehow fills itself.
Published
Sunday is the day that exists to remind you that not every day needs a project.
I say this because yesterday I turned the compost heap and felt very accomplished about it, and today I woke up with no comparable mission, and instead of feeling lost I felt… free. There is a difference between having nothing to do and choosing to do nothing. The first is a crisis. The second is a luxury. Today was the second.
Six point four degrees at the low. Up from yesterday’s four point six, which my body registered with something approaching gratitude. Not warm — six point four will never be warm — but warmer enough. Enough that the frost didn’t come. Enough that when I opened the round door at half seven, the grass was merely damp rather than crystallised. The feels-like was six point one, which is close enough to the actual temperature that the wind had evidently taken Sunday off as well. Only ten point six kilometres an hour, drifting up from due south, barely enough to move a leaf. A polite wind. A Sunday wind.
Clear sky. Again. I have now officially stopped counting. The Shire is locked into some kind of atmospheric arrangement with the sun — you show up, we’ll be here, and between us we’ll pretend clouds were never invented. I should be grateful, and I am, mostly, but there’s a part of me — the gardening part, the part that watches the soil — that is beginning to compose a letter to the clouds requesting their earliest convenience.
Zero millimetres of rain. Again. The water butt I topped up yesterday is holding steady, but it shouldn’t have to. That’s what sky water is for. The soil in the raised beds has gone from workable to cooperative, which sounds like an upgrade but is actually the stage just before reluctant. I gave the garlic a quiet drink from the watering can this evening. It didn’t thank me, because garlic has never thanked anyone for anything, but it didn’t object either, and with garlic, that’s as close to affection as you get.
Sunrise at seven twelve. One minute later than yesterday, continuing the autumn’s steady campaign of shortening the mornings. Sunset at seventeen fifteen — and here’s the thing — down one minute from yesterday. So the pause is over. Both ends are closing in now. The days are being compressed, gently but unmistakably, like a book being slowly shut. Ten hours and three minutes of daylight. I don’t count these things to be morbid. I count them because noticing is a form of respect, and the light deserves that.
I spent the morning doing what I believe is called pottering. There is no direct translation for this into any language spoken outside the Shire, because no other culture has quite perfected it. Pottering is movement without urgency. It is the act of wandering between small tasks — adjusting a thing here, inspecting a thing there, standing in the middle of a room for thirty seconds trying to remember what you came in for and then deciding it doesn’t matter and moving on. It is the opposite of productivity, and it is essential.
I pottered to the garden first. The broad beans have made their decision: they are going to flop. Not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but the lean is there, the unmistakable angle of a plant that has grown taller than its own structural engineering can support. I stood before them with my hands on my hips, the way you do when you’re a hobbit assessing a situation that requires stakes and string and a commitment of at least twenty minutes, and I said — out loud, to the beans — “Not today.” And they leaned a little further, which I took as acknowledgement.
The garlic remains the garlic. Stoic. Unbothered. Growing at whatever pace it has privately decided upon. I have stopped checking the garlic for progress and started simply visiting it, the way you’d visit a neighbour who doesn’t want anything from you but appreciates the gesture.
The high reached fifteen point four. A full degree warmer than yesterday, which felt like a gift after the recent slide downward. The sun arrived with quiet authority and did its work — UV peaking at three point oh five, just enough to remind you it exists but not enough to cause any concern. I sat on the bench outside the front door at midday and let it find my face, and I stayed there for what might have been ten minutes or might have been forty. Time moves differently on a Sunday. It doesn’t march. It ambles.
Humidity at eighty-five percent. Down from yesterday’s ninety, which meant the air was fractionally less like breathing through a damp flannel and fractionally more like breathing through a slightly less damp flannel. Progress. In the afternoon the world smelled of earth and dry leaves and something faintly sweet that might have been the last of the late-season flowers or might have been wishful thinking. I didn’t investigate. Some mysteries are better left as mysteries.
Three cups of tea today. Not four. I know. I can feel yesterday’s Gerald looking at me with disappointment, having only just yesterday declared four to be the canonical number. But Sunday has its own rules. Sunday says: if three is enough, then three is enough, and the fourth cup is not an obligation but an option, and today I declined it. I spent the time I would have spent making and drinking a fourth cup standing at the window instead, watching the light change from afternoon gold to evening grey, which is also a form of sustenance.
The third cup was peppermint, which is a radical departure for me and which I am choosing to attribute to the influence of Sunday rather than any deeper character shift. It was fine. It was pleasant. It was not breakfast tea, and I will not be making a habit of it, but I will also not pretend it didn’t happen. Honesty in all things, including tea.
The evening came early, the way autumn evenings do — not with darkness but with a dimming, a gradual turning down of the world’s brightness as if someone were adjusting a dial. By five fifteen the sun was gone, and by six the sky was that particular shade of deep blue that isn’t quite night but has given up on being day. I lit the fire. I sat in the chair. I did not read. I did not write — well, until now. I simply sat, and the fire crackled, and the room was warm, and somewhere outside the temperature was dropping back toward six point four and below, and I was inside, and the door was round, and the walls were thick, and this was enough.
I did check my star. Still there. Low and bright in the north, exactly where I left it. I am developing a relationship with this star that I suspect is entirely one-sided, but I don’t mind. Most of the best relationships involve at least one party who doesn’t know they’re in one.
Tomorrow is Monday, which means the week begins again, which means there will be things to do and reasons to do them. But tonight is still Sunday, and Sunday’s only job is to end gently, and it is performing that job with characteristic excellence.
The broad beans will get their stakes this week. I’ve said it now. It’s written down. They can hold me to it.
Good night from the Shire. 🍄