The New Yorker:

I have always thought in terms of Armageddon. Thanks to epigenetic trauma and good old-fashioned worry, I’ve long since established which friends will hide us in the attic and where the neighborhood plum trees grow, should the need for emergency food or shelter arise. My poor children have been groomed to appreciate lentils; I readily eat weeds. One might assume that, now that disaster is upon us, someone like me would explode with anxiety. But, actually, I might be O.K. For one thing, I have a garden again.

Last summer, when the world seemed mad but, in retrospect, was fine, I was freshly divorced and searching for a permanent home. I found a big flat that had a sunny roof terrace and, down a metal staircase, cursorily divided from the downstairs lady’s domain by an elfin picket fence, a wasteland of a yard. It was a mere nine by five metres, full of brambles, ivy, weeds, and a yucca the size of Ozymandias’s skull: not perfect, not remotely, but I envisioned that, one day, perhaps, I would transform it.

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