It doesn’t matter if it’s an apartment balcony of coffee can planters or a carefully rototilled and trellised garden, southerners are compelled to plant things in the spring. It can be a windowsill of Scarborough Fair herbs. It can be a wine barrel of peppers. In the spring, southerners are required to garden.

In the summer, there may only be one vegetable harvested. There might be grocery bags of produce left on the neighbors’ doorsteps. Southerners smile wryly at both results. That’s in the rules, too.