The parking garden flooded last night. It stormed. Not a mad one, but enough to sweep the dead maple tree across the old traffic light pole and down onto the worm farm. I forgot to set our industrial flood alarm.

It’s not my fault. But I can’t say this, of course. Sula is raging. Thinks we lost our harvest of turnips. I remind her that we grow them precisely because they’re resilient. She hates that word. The R word. Resilient. It was used a lot when we were kids.

She also hates the term: parking garden. I like these tethers to yesterday. The world around us is always changing, but we can still keep parts of that other time alive with language. She maintains that it was likely a garden before it was a parking lot and so, should just be called a garden. Her name means peace. There’s little peaceful about her these days.