©2026 Myrna Urmanita. All Rights Reserved.

The answer, my friend, is in the garden…

When I got up this morning, it was already hot. The forecast was 104 degrees. Before coffee, before breakfast, I knew the garden had to come first. I had to run out there before the heat beat me to it.

The sun hadn't reached the garden yet, so I unrolled the hose, turned on the tap, and stood in the shade as I watered the strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, lemon tree, mints, dill, my wildflowers, gardenias, and potted plants.

While the water soaked into the earth, my thoughts wandered somewhere entirely different—to writing.

When I stepped back into the kitchen, I decided to pickle some of the vegetables I had plucked from the garden before they went bad. So I pulled out all my ingredients and materials. When I made the brine, cut the cucumbers, and washed them, I thought about how pickling them was preserving them so they would last—not forever, but long enough to enjoy their delicious flavors and preserve the memories of the harvest.

I thought about how pickling wasn't that much different from writing stories to preserve memories.

Pickling preserves the harvest.

Writing preserves the moments.

Today, I plucked the vegetables that were ripe, ready for the table.

And as a writer, I pick moments, people, and objects I notice that echo with meaning.

The brine I mixed for my pickling spiced the flavor of my harvest.

My words and my added reflections bring my memories to life in my stories.

A jar keeps vegetables from spoiling.

A story keeps memories from disappearing.

My stories become the place where those memories continue to live.

Then, when I opened that jar, that first bite brought the memories of growing them as seedlings, watering them in the heat of summer, and harvesting their beautiful fruits and colors.

And when I read one of my stories, it carries me back to the past—standing in my father's garden, learning how to sew with my mother, hearing my children's laughter—memories of the past.