The garden

My mother's garden is three raised beds behind the house, built by my father the summer I turned twelve, out of lumber he swore would last forever. It has lasted twenty-three years, which is close enough. Every board has been replaced at least once since, by my mother, with a level and an opinion.

When I was home in June we weeded it together, on our knees, most mornings before it got warm. She has a system, because she has a system for everything. One bed each. No talking until you reach the end of your row, and then you're allowed to say one thing before you start the next. I hadn't remembered the system until we were out there and I started to say something halfway down a row and she lifted one finger without looking up. I'm a grown woman with a mortgage's worth of rent. It didn't matter.

The things we said at the ends of the rows were mostly about the neighbors. A few were about my father. One was about me, and whether I was happy in Seattle, which she asked to a clump of quackgrass and I answered to the peas.

The peas were climbing then, up the same twine trellis she uses every year, and I ate one pod straight off the vine the way I have since I could reach them, and got the same look I've gotten since I could reach them. They came in properly a couple of weeks after I left. She's been reporting by phone. A very good year for peas, she says, though a dry one for everything else, and she's been carrying water out from the rain barrel in a can because the barrel is empty and she won't run the hose on principle. I didn't ask which principle. There are several.

She shelled them on the back step, she says, and froze what she didn't eat, in bags labeled and dated in her librarian's hand. One bag is marked with my name. It'll be in the freezer whenever I'm home next, behind the rhubarb, where nobody else will touch it.

I have a pot of basil on my windowsill here and I feel I've done my part.