“My great-grandmother designed that herself,” Laura said, unable to hide a note of pride in her voice.

“It’s amazing,” I said, because there never was a safer adjective than amazing.

“She was intensely preoccupied with the fall of man,” Laura said, as if that were a normal hobby, like, She loved to knit.

“What’s behind it?” I asked. All I could see through the small holes in the gate was a wall of leaves, some kind of overgrown bush.

“Oh, nothing,” Laura said. “The edge of the property.”

I stared at it for a while. What a shame that something as incredible as that gate should be surrounded by bare dirt and chipped flowerpots.

“Nothing grows back here,” Laura said, as if anticipating my question.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

She shrugged. “Well, they were expelled from the garden.”

I looked over at her, impressed that she had made a little joke, expecting to see a wry smile on her face. But she looked serious and—maybe I was imagining it—a little contemptuous.

Sensing my eyes on her, she snapped back to serenity. “If you turn left, you’ll find the exotic tropical flowers . . . the showgirls of the place.”

I did turn left, and was happy to find a jungle of vividly colored flowers in all shapes and sizes.

Laura eventually left me to explore on my own, and when I found her again, she was kneeling on a foam pad in front of a bed of fluffy yellow-orange flowers on short stems, surrounded by delicate leaves.

“I’m weeding the marigolds.” She held up a scraggly plant with its roots exposed, like a hunter showing off a dead animal. “Would you like to help?”

She produced a second foam pad and a pair of purple gloves, and I knelt next to her.

“Marigolds are hardy little helpers,” she said. “They’re not flashy, but they deter bugs. That’s why we plant them around the tomatoes. I’m rather fond of them—they don’t ask anything of you, they just bloom and stand guard. Anything else you find here is a weed.”

“Like this?” I pointed to a flat plant that was a spreading web of oval leaves.

“Yes. That’s purslane. Grab it around the stem, right next to the ground, and pull.”

I did, but instead of pulling the roots out, I only managed to rip off the leafy top.

Laura handed me a small shovel. “If that happens, you dig out the roots.”

After the whole weed had been removed, Laura and I worked in silence, moving in opposite directions. I lost myself in the work—so simple, so methodical. It was a relief to do something that made sense, for a change. Something that wasn’t colored with eight kinds of nuance and ways I could mess up or say the wrong thing. Kill bad plant. Easy enough, right?