November in her yard smelled like wet leaves and cold dirt. The flowers were gone. The tomato cages were stacked against the garage. Anybody driving by would’ve said the gardening season was over, and she let them think it. But she was out there in a barn coat and gloves with the fingertips worn through, … Read more
October smelled like woodsmoke and wet leaves at her house. The garden was half wrecked — blackened tomato vines, a bean row gone to string — and she was out there anyway in a cardigan and rubber boots. She wasn’t cleaning up. She was setting things up. Almost everything that went right in her garden … Read more
The seed rack at the garden center didn’t always exist. Neither did the plastic clamshell of nursery transplants, the bottle of concentrated plant food, or the bag of mulch that costs more than the plant it surrounds. She had a wire ring behind the garage. A coffee can. A pencil. And somehow the garden fed … Read more
Her garden shed smelled like twine, rust and old coffee grounds. Nothing in it came from a garden center. There was a coffee can of nails, a hoe worn thin on one side, a stack of newspapers, and jars — always jars. A folded feed sack by the door for kneeling. Not one plastic clamshell, … Read more
