Chapter 11: New Ground
The community garden project began on a cool morning at the edge of the old industrial quarter.
My father arrived before most of the volunteers, wearing the same practical clothes he had always worn to work. The only difference was the quiet confidence in the way he moved. Colonel Mendoza had made it clear that James Evans was not there as a token story. He was there because he knew how to make difficult soil produce something living.
I visited the site twice in the first week. I watched him show a group of teenagers how to test drainage with nothing more than a shovel and patience. I watched older veterans listen when he spoke about which plants could survive neglect and which ones needed steady care. No one looked past him. No one asked what a gardener could possibly know.
On the third visit he caught me standing at the edge of the lot and walked over, wiping soil from his hands.
“You don’t have to keep checking on me,” he said, though there was no real complaint in his voice.
“I’m not checking,” I answered. “I’m learning what it looks like when someone finally gets to do the work properly.”
He glanced back at the half-cleared ground, the stacked lumber for raised beds, the young trees waiting in their nursery pots.
“Feels different,” he admitted. “When the work belongs to something bigger than a private lawn.”
May you like
I nodded.
It did.
