She would appear at my elbow and press something into my hands — a bundle of herbs, a warm foil package, once a whole jar of pickled mustard greens — and wave off my thanks and my confusion with the same small gesture, as though feeding a bewildered new person were simply what one did, required no discussion, was beneath comment.

Through Mai I ate things that first summer I would never otherwise have tasted, standing in the dirt, and through the eating I understood something about the garden that no amount of my own plot could have taught me: that it was a table as much as a field.

Everyone fed everyone.

The surplus moved sideways constantly — Sal’s tomatoes to the young couple, the young couple’s peppers to Connie, Connie’s impossible zucchini glut to all of us whether we wanted it or not, Mai’s mysterious greens to the newcomer who didn’t know what they were.

Nobody’s plot fed only themselves.