What I Found In The Backyard

On my great-grandfather's 'hot sauce' and the traditions we carry on.

When we first moved into our house, a suburban ranch with a nice-sized backyard, my mother-in-law remarked that it was nice we had so much space out back where we “could grow your own food if things ever got really bad”. I chuckled. I love having a garden; it was one of the things I was most excited about in becoming a homeowner. After years of having no dirt I could call my own, it would be an utter delight to, as I often jokingly refer to it, “walk out in the backyard and find some food”. But her statement struck me as odd, at the time—she’s by no means a conspiracy theorist or doomsday planner, and it just seemed like an unusually dark thing to say. 

In 2017, that is. 

In 2020, I tripled the size of my garden, and spent hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours constructing a protective cage of lumber and chicken wire around it.

As you age, it’s not uncommon to realize things your older relatives told you that you thought were silly at the time might actually make sense—it just doesn’t …