The sign said plot eight. Ema saw seven and planted radishes in the wrong soil. When she returned the following Saturday, a man carrying a watering can stood over her neat rows as though studying unexplained messages. His name was Luka, and he had intended to grow tomatoes there. Both were new to the city garden, with more purchased tools than experience.
Ema immediately offered to dig everything up. Luka said he did not know whether the radishes had already begun living and would feel uncomfortable interrupting them. That absurd tenderness toward seeds made her laugh. They agreed to share until sorting the numbers out with the coordinator. The following week she offered them separate plots. Both said too quickly that there was no need.
Luka worked at a bank and dreamed of country life. Ema had grown up in the country and moved to the city precisely to stop rising for other people's crops. The garden was a small hobby for her, a rehearsal for his future. As they weeded she listened to his imagined chickens, workshop, and long veranda. She did not mock him but asked whether he knew how much work remained after the veranda photograph was taken.
One hot weekend Luka did not come. He went to a music festival and forgot to tell her. Ema watered everything, angrier than she wished to admit. When he appeared smiling with his first serious dinner invitation, she showed him the empty cans. She said she did not want to enable another person's dream by quietly doing its unattractive work. The invitation remained between them, unaccepted.
Over the following weeks Luka came regularly without performing self-sacrifice. One evening he admitted perhaps loving the countryside as an image rather than an obligation. Ema said that sentence interested her more than every account of the perfect house. They cooked their first tomatoes into sauce in her small city kitchen. The radishes were too sharp, so they ate them slowly with plenty of bread.
When he asked about dinner again, Ema replied that they were having one. They kissed beside the sink between two washed jars. At the season's end they divided the last harvest and wrote down what not to plant next year. Luka crossed out his large-garden plan without abandoning their plot. Ema added flowers that could not be eaten. The soil did not become their whole life. It was large enough for something they wanted to grow together.