“You have watered past the regulation amount allocated to your household,” a gruff, disembodied voice thundered over the garden.
Rosie froze, her little hands gripping the watering can. A prickle of dread, or perhaps anticipation, sparkled like static along her small spine. She imagined the claw descending from the sky, or the angry sounds of heavy boots thumping up the concrete path that led to their haven.
“Your family will have three hundred credits deducted from their weekly food allocation,” the voice continued. Rosie’s belly was bloated with stolen snacks. She loved raw snow peas and fennel seeds with their liquorice bite, and was always getting in trouble for plucking asparagus before it was ready, but she still could imagine hunger.
“You are ordered to remove the unauthorised seedlings in Row X, which exceed your permitted cultivation quota for the year. Please report to authorities at oh-nine-hundred hours.”
A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. The claw! Rosie squealed.
“Grandma!” she laughed. “That’s really scary! Were you scared?” No matter how many times they played this game, the idea of a world without her beloved garden made her feel queasy and upset.
Grandma lowered herself onto the wooden edge of the west bed, beneath the shade of the orange tree. Blood oranges were Rosie’s favourite. She liked to make a big orange smile with their rind stuffed between her lips.
“Yes, we were scared,” Grandma said, rubbing her palms together so the remnants of dirt from the day's gardening sprinkled onto the beds. Her hands were bulbous with age but softened by a lifetime of calendula balm. “Back then, you weren’t allowed a personal garden. Not one turnip, not one brassica. Big Ag had the patents on nearly every seed and the government had listened to them and made it illegal to grow unlicensed crops. They called it biosecurity. Really, it was monopoly.”
Rosie frowned, the big words too much for her. “Why?” was a better response to any mystery. It unravelled more things, which a curious girl fed on as much as she did roasted cabbage drizzled with honey and almonds.
“They wanted control of the food chain from soil to mouth,” Grandma said. “If you needed to eat, you had to buy their product — their seed, their fertiliser, their packaged meals. They even controlled the water. We weren’t allowed to store it. Each home got a weekly credit allowance, monitored by hydro-meters linked to the national grid. If you went over your limit, the drones would come. You weren’t allowed more water. Sometimes children died from thirst. It never made much sense, I’m afraid.”
She leaned closer. “The soil was chipped, too — nano-sensors in the dirt. Like tiny bugs that spied on us. They could tell if you were growing something because the sensors could read the plant’s DNA from root secretions. The ground and sky told on you.”
Rosie loved it when Grandma made the sound of the drones — a high, mosquito-like whine — circling over her hiding spots under the elder trees or the giant rhubarb leaves, although she was getting a little old to shelter there now.
“But you could still grow flowers?” Rosie asked.
“Yes,” Grandma smiled. “Flowers were allowed — for the pollinators they needed for their crops. They thought it would keep people docile, something pretty to tend while they rationed everything. But I planted sneaky flowers — medicinal, edible ones. Calendula for balm. Nasturtiums for salads. Violas for tea. I got away with it for a while, until they upgraded the plant-profiling algorithms in the spy drones. After that, even a pot of basil or a rose could get you a fine.”
Rosie glanced at the marigolds nodding in the sun. Their hooked seeds clung to anything. Survivors. She knew they came from her Grandmother’s secretive stash, the little jars in the basement she kept just in case.
“Then came the Green Riots,” Grandma said, her gaze going far away. “It was the ’80s, and the water cuts had pushed whole towns into famine. Big Ag’s silos were full, but they exported the grain and that kept prices really high. People had had enough. Gardeners, farmers, scientists, and even old office workers, doctors, store clerks - everyone, because there wasn’t a single person this didn’t affect - they broke into the seed vaults, smashed the drones, burned the patents. They hacked the soil sensors, fed false data so that crops could grow undetected. They tore down the monoculture system. They shouted ‘food belongs to everyone’!’
Rosie’s eyes widened. “And they won?” She knew they did of course, or she wouldn’t be sitting in the garden with her grandma.
“Not at first. They were arrested and called eco-terrorists. Some of them were hurt, too. But their ideas of freedom spread faster than the companies could stop them. Secretive gardens bloomed in abandoned carparks, railway lines, rooftops and no one could stop them because they couldn’t trace who owned them. Communities shared seeds and knowledge and hacked into water systems. The surveillance grids failed under sheer numbers. You can’t arrest an entire city for planting kale and parsley”
Rosie thought about that. “When I’m big, I want to be like them.”
Grandma nodded. “You already are my darling pea. Look at you planting and sharing your zucchini with the neighbours. You know where your food comes from. That’s what the heroes of the Riots fought for. And it’s the new generations that passed the laws to mandate personal gardens. But we don’t even need these laws anymore do we?. Once you’ve tasted a yellow cherry tomato warmed in the sun” - her grandmother popped one in her mouth to illustrate - “you’ll never go back to plastic-wrapped bollocks with no nutritional value shipped from a thousand miles away.”
Rosie didn’t understand all of Grandma’s history lessons (in fact, she was giggling at testicles wrapped in plastic), but she absolutely knew that fuzzy broad beans, bright calendula, and blood oranges were where life was at.
With Love,
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