I love images of bringing the past, at least in its positive manifestations, into the present and future. Nicolson provides us with a couple of fine similes, and I particularly like his earth-digging, tilth-making metaphor. 

But here now, maybe, there was something else: the ability to fold the past over into the future, like turning the blankets and sheets over at the top of a bed, or digging over a piece of ground, turning the sods, grass down, and breaking the exposed soil to make a new tilth. 

Source: Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst: An unfinished history (London: Harper Press, 2009), pp. 71-72

Photo credit: Annie Spratt at unsplash