Unca Joe produced most of our fresh food in a series of wrap-around terraces rising floor by floor around the central tower of the skylight well. The fifth floor was the barn floor, with sties and coops and stalls on the inside, leading to heavily fortified terrace runs for our pigs, goats, and chickens. The sixth-floor terraces were planted with fruit-bearing shrubs and vines, plus one of our greatest treasures—the apple, plum, cherry, peach, and pear trees espaliered along the walls, for protection from the winds. The sixth-floor roof held the six long hoop houses of our vegetable garden, each with three rows of raised beds and two aisles between. Sounds like a lot of growing space, but it was just as crowded as our living areas. No inch went unused. A sheltered corner was stuffed with compost bins. Solar panels and stubby windmills were fastened wherever there was opportunity.

I had zero gardening chops, which I took as further proof I’d always been a city girl, and probably not raised in one of the urban farm cooperatives that took over the parks when supply lines from the Mainland became less reliable. Gimme Shelter and a few other dens grew out of these. Much of that land was flooded now, at least downtown, where food production had retreated to rooftops and terraces like ours.

Because basic garden maintenance was considered therapeutic, I’d been posted up there my first few weeks out of the Ward. I’d learned how to dig and weed, and I’d got pretty good at the finicky but brain-dead task of thinning young veggie shoots. The day was hot when I arrived on Six, despite a misty drizzle, and busy with storm repair teams coming and going. The place was still a mess.

Picking was vital, but the gardens were our most valuable asset. Like most pickers, I knew this but still tended to take for granted the steady stream of edibles to the Mess. But the shock of coming face to face with the wreckage left on Six by Storm Joseph sure made me reconsider the vulnerability of our food supply.

We weren’t the tallest building around by any stretch. Nearby later-built glass towers offered some wind-shelter and sun-reflection, a sense of protection. But they also tended to shed debris during a big storm, their windows blowing out and whatever might be left inside lifting into the gale to rain down on our terraces, puncturing the precious plastic sheeting covering our hoop houses, crashing onto the raised beds, crushing the plants. The sheeting on one house was nearly shredded, now being replaced with a meticulous patchwork of the larger strips salvaged from previous damage.