Old age came for me quick, and now I know what my grandmother meant when she said her knees couldn’t handle long days in the garden. My knees click and grind like mechanical whirs and I wonder how much longer I can stay out here because the sun breached the horizon and wants to bathe us in light. Despite the calendar reading January 1, 2050, we find no mercy for the heat. As bad as that may sound, it’s not. We’ve learned to live with it, just as we’ve learned to live with the ebb and flow of the tides encroaching further on our land each year until downtown Charleston’s peninsula appeared more like a set of small islands.
But that’s only part of the story. I still live in the same townhouse I moved into when I was 26 and angry at the world. My partner and I vowed to move, to buy a house, but the prices went up and the water came in. We decided to stay where we were, to invest in a life here, the “shoulds” and “supposed tos” of adult life be damned! This garden, this collection of pots on the back porch, is where it started all those years ago.
I had always wanted the big things to change — the gas companies to stop their polluting, the factory farms to shut down, private jets to be banned — but those things didn’t happen, and if they did, it was too late. I knew then, like I know now, we can’t rely on others to make this place livable. We must rely on ourselves. Armed with mismatched pots, an assortment of seeds, and some soil from the hardware store, we planted a few things that first summer: tomatoes, green onions, strawberries, and squash. We watched the sun beat down and the plants peek their green stems above the dirt. All summer I plucked cherry tomatoes off the vine and popped them into my mouth, the flavor rich and acidic and beautiful. They still come every year, the plant dormant during the few cold months, but perking up once sun and warmth greet us again.
We started small that year, just a few things, but as the years went on, our back porch garden grew and grew. Our friends, who have a big yard, big house, and chickens, let us bring our compost to them. They’d take care of it and we could have some. We shared what we grew with neighbors and friends. Soon, it wasn’t just our garden, it was a community garden; that little slab of concrete, that tiny patch of grass, it was what kept us together.
That’s what we needed — to be kept together. The weather worsened. It takes my fingers and toes to count the number of destructive hurricanes that passed through here, but that’s not what we think about anymore. For a while I didn’t know my neighbors. The next-door ones, sure, but not the others, and overtime we found we could rely on each other, build up our own little community. That was true resilience.
Some projects were small, some were big, but they connected us to one another, made it so life was still possible despite all the hurt, despite all the uncertainty in the world. A neighbor on a huge plot of land opened up her backyard to grow more food. We repurposed the grassy medians in the road with native plants, inviting pollinators, birds, and insects. Someone installed a shared outdoor kitchen. Bikes became the norm, as did sitting on the front porch. Life exited the silos and slowly, over the years, we came together, rethought what it meant to be a community.
About ten years ago, we finally went waste free. It was a long, hard battle, but doable because we had each other. We let each other borrow the things we need, we composted what we could, and everything else we found new use for. Jack, who lives across the street, built a playhouse for the neighborhood kids out of old plastic water bottles and milk cartons. And you should have seen the look on their faces! The way those kids lit up, knowing that someone made something for them. There was nothing like it.
We found, eventually, we didn’t need a lot of what we had. We could share, we could reinvent, we could take the time to grow our own food, mend and make our clothes. We put on our own art shows, installed solar panels, and realized that most of what we considered “comforts” back in the old days were just pieces of equipment that kept us complacent. When you’re busy it’s hard to take the time for slowness. Things aren’t the same. I’m not living a life of luxury, but I am happy. I’m happy that what started with a couple of pots on my back porch turned into self-sufficiency and resiliency in the face of disaster. And it’s not just us either — we’re one of many little communities.
I write to the others. I’m sending letters again — the long, handwritten kind detailing life and love and the abundance of joy, writing about hardship and struggle and change, and I see how things are so different now. The sun may be hot, the storms might still come, but we’re not reliant anymore, not reliant on machines and money and making sure everything is done exactly right. We’re in this together, just people, coming up with solutions, problem-solving, knocking on doors and helping each other out.
From the outside, it may seem worse than it used to be. From the inside, this is how it always should have been.