His name was Sal, and he had, I would learn, been gardening that same corner plot for forty-one years, since before the lot was a garden at all, when it was a rubble-filled hole the neighborhood had cleaned out by hand.

He was seventy-six and built like a fence post and he ran the place, though there was no title for what he did; he was simply the one everyone deferred to, the keeper of the water schedule and the settler of disputes and the man who knew, by feel, when the last frost had truly passed.

He walked me to Plot Twelve, which was the worst one, weedy and half-shaded and abandoned by whoever’d had it last, and he said, “This one’s open.

Twenty dollars for the season.