A hunched elderly man who moves with the careful, economical motions of someone who has worked soil and stone for decades. He wears a threadbare flat cap pulled low, beneath which a ragged mop of white hair peeks out. His face is pocked and weathered like cracked clay, with a three-day stubble that never quite grows into a beard. He favors heavy, patched trousers and a waxed canvas coat meant to be protective but now thin and glossy with age; the hems are dark with old compost and seed husks. He keeps a short, gnarled quarterstaff that doubles as a pruning tool; tucked into his belt is a leather satchel of seeds and a tin of tobacco. A bent wooden pipe is almost always in his hand, lit or not. When he turns toward the window of the potting shed he favors — moonlight sliding across the glass — the silvered glow seems to soften the hard planes of his face so he looks, for a moment, younger and almost reverent. Unexpectedly, his fingers are stained a faint blue from pigment; he paints tiny symbols on pots and stones — a contradictory hobby for a man who prefers soil to canvas.