River's first day of "garden school" began at 6 AM with Flora knocking on his grandmother's door, carrying two cups of coffee and wearing clothes that looked like they had already seen several hours of work.
"Rule number one," she said, handing him a cup. "Plants wake up with the sun. If you want to understand them, you need to wake up with them too."
River, who had spent years waking up before dawn for restaurant prep, found this strangely comforting. But instead of rushing to prep vegetables that would be transformed beyond recognition, he was going to learn how those vegetables grew in the first place.
Flora led him to a section of his grandmother's garden that was particularly overgrown. "We'll start here. Weeding teaches you to pay attention - to know what belongs and what doesn't."
She knelt down and began pulling up invasive grass with practiced efficiency. "See how this bermuda grass has shallow roots but spreads everywhere? It'll choke out everything else if you let it. But this..." She pointed to a cluster of broad leaves. "This is lamb's quarters. Most people think it's a weed, but it's actually more nutritious than spinach."
River knelt beside her and tentatively pulled at a clump of grass. It came up easily, roots trailing soil. "How do you know which is which?"
"Time. Observation. Making mistakes." Flora handed him a small, sharp tool. "Your grandmother taught me that every plant has something to say if you listen carefully enough."
They worked in comfortable silence as the sun climbed higher. River found the repetitive motion of weeding oddly meditative. In his restaurant kitchen, every movement had been about speed and efficiency. Here, the rhythm was different - more about patience and attention to detail.
"Tell me about your restaurant," Flora said after they had cleared several square feet of garden bed.
River paused, a handful of weeds in his grip. "What do you want to know?"
"What kind of food do you make?"
River realized he didn't know how to answer that question anymore. "Complicated food. Expensive food. Food that looks impressive."
"Do people enjoy eating it?"
"They take pictures of it."
Flora looked up from her weeding. "That's not the same thing."
"No," River said quietly. "It's not."
They worked until the sun was directly overhead, then Flora declared it time for lunch. Instead of going inside, she pulled a simple meal from her backpack - rice balls wrapped in seaweed, pickled vegetables, and a thermos of cold barley tea.
"This is perfect," River said, biting into a rice ball that tasted like it had been made with care rather than precision.
"My grandmother's recipe. Nothing fancy, but it keeps you going during a long day of work."
River thought about the elaborate lunches served at his restaurant - seven-course tasting menus that took three hours to consume and cost more than most people's weekly groceries. When was the last time he had eaten something simply because he was hungry?
"Flora," he said, "why did you start farming?"
Flora was quiet for a moment, looking out over the garden they had been weeding. "I used to work in an office in Busan. Marketing for a big company. Good salary, nice apartment, everything I thought I wanted."
"What changed?"
"I got sick. Nothing serious, just stress and bad food and no sunlight for months at a time. My doctor told me I needed to change my lifestyle or I'd have real problems." Flora smiled. "So I quit my job, spent my savings on this little farm, and decided to learn how to grow my own food."
"That must have been scary."
"Terrifying. I didn't know anything about farming. My first year, I lost half my crops to pests and disease. I almost gave up."
"But you didn't."
"Your grandmother wouldn't let me. She showed up one day when I was crying over my failed tomato plants and said, 'Failures are just expensive lessons. Now let me teach you how to do it right.'"
River felt that familiar tightness in his chest. His grandmother, helping a stranger learn to grow food while her own grandson was in Seoul creating molecular foams and edible flowers.
"She sounds like she was a good teacher."
"The best. She taught me that farming isn't about controlling nature - it's about working with it. Understanding what plants need and creating conditions for them to thrive."
Flora gathered up the remains of their lunch. "Ready for lesson two?"
The afternoon was spent learning to properly water plants. River had assumed watering was simple - point hose, apply water. But Flora showed him how different plants had different needs. Some wanted deep, infrequent watering. Others preferred light, frequent sprinkles. Some needed water at their roots, others on their leaves.
"It's like cooking," Flora explained. "Each ingredient needs to be treated according to its nature."
River found himself thinking about his restaurant staff, how he had trained them to follow exact procedures regardless of the individual needs of each dish, each ingredient, each moment. One-size-fits-all precision instead of intuitive adaptation.
"River," Flora said as they finished watering the herb garden, "can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Why did you really come back here?"
River set down the watering can and looked at his dirt-stained hands. In Seoul, he would have been horrified by the state of his fingernails. Here, it felt like evidence of honest work.
"I was drowning," he said finally. "I had everything I thought I wanted, but I couldn't breathe. I was making beautiful food that had no soul, living in a beautiful apartment that felt like a tomb, surrounded by people who knew my reputation but not me."
Flora nodded like she understood completely.
"And then this old man came to my restaurant. He ordered kimchi jjigae because it reminded him of his late wife. But what I served him was this pretentious, deconstructed thing that looked like art and tasted like nothing. So I went back to the kitchen and made him real kimchi jjigae. Simple. Honest. Like my grandmother used to make."
"How did it feel?"
"Like remembering how to breathe."
Flora was quiet for a moment, then said, "I think your grandmother would be proud of you for coming home."
"Even though I abandoned everything she taught me?"
"Especially because you found your way back."
As the sun began to set behind the mountains, River helped Flora clean and put away the garden tools. His back ached from bending over plants all day, his hands were stained with soil, and his expensive jeans were probably ruined.
He had never felt better.
"Same time tomorrow?" Flora asked as they walked back toward the houses.
"Definitely."
"Good. Tomorrow we learn about compost. Fair warning - it involves a lot of rotting vegetables."
River laughed. "I think I can handle a little rot."
As Flora headed down the mountain path toward her own farm, River stood in his grandmother's garden and watched the first stars appear in the clear mountain sky. The air smelled like growing things and possibilities.
For the first time in years, River was excited about tomorrow.
Not because of a business opportunity or a chance to impress someone, but because he was going to learn something new about how life actually worked.
How things grew.
How to tend them properly.
How to help them become what they were meant to be.
River looked down at his dirty hands and smiled.
Maybe that was exactly what he needed to learn about himself.