The morning haze hung low over the riverbed like a woven sheet of spun glass, shimmering under the pale rose glow of dawn. The air had a sharp, damp crispness to it that stung the nostrils in a clean, invigorating way, carrying the fragrance of crushed wild berries, wet moss, and river silt up toward the house. High in the elderberry bushes along the fence line, a flock of thrushes filled the quiet clearing with sharp, sweet calls, welcoming the first warm rays of the sun as they cleared the eastern ridgeline.
I stood on the broad flat stones of the lower terrace, unrolling a long roll of heavy linen measuring tape across the freshly cleared ground near our southern garden beds. The earth here had been turned, aerated, and enriched over the previous weeks, yielding a dark, crumbly loam th
