Chapter 11

Day 318: Primitive Photos

It appeared that we’d been lucky with the medicinal garden. Of course, we’d kept a close eye on the seeds we’d planted, and it appeared that a good percentage of them had sprouted. We were fortunate we didn’t wait any longer to get started with this project—a few months might have made all the difference.

Today, we brought out the old Polaroid camera, which we’d found tucked in the back of a drawer in someone’s den, weeks ago. At the time, we hadn’t done much more than snap a quick test photo of the porch steps, just to see if it worked. It did. Barely. The whir of the mechanism had sounded like a wheezy old man getting out of a recliner. But the photo developed. Grainy, faded colors, but legible.

And we had one full pack of film. Ten shots.

Now, standing out in our garden with the light slanting just right, Amara said, “We should document this. Like, for real. Ten pictures. Our story.”

“I thought our story was in your journal,” I said.

She smirked. “That’s just words. This is proof.”

So, we started snapping. One of the medicinal garden, with the little spoon-labels catching the light. One of our flamingos, now lovingly repaired and proudly guarding hole six of our backyard mini-golf course. One of Amara in the orchard, reaching for a mango like she was posing for a Renaissance painting.

I took one of her holding up a fish at arm’s length with the most triumphant expression, and she got me back by capturing a shot of me mid-yawn, shirtless and smeared with dirt from digging a new compost trench.

Eventually, we got to the one we both knew we needed: the two of us together. A selfie. But with a vintage Polaroid?

We stood there with the camera, and I said, “How do we even do this? No timer.”

Amara tilted her head, already scheming. “We build a stand. Stack a few crates on the porch, angle it just right, and I’ll tie a string to the shutter.”

“You think a string’ll work?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Twenty minutes later, we had the camera perched on a wobbly pile of gardening buckets, secured with duct tape and optimism. A string—actually yarn from someone’s abandoned knitting basket—was tied to the shutter and stretched across the patio to where we stood, arms looped around each other.

“Ready?” she asked.

I nodded, and she gave the string a sharp tug.

Click. Whirr.

We watched the photo emerge with an audible gasp from the camera’s ancient guts.

When the image finally developed, we stared down at it in silence. The two of us, standing close, sun in our faces, smudged and barefoot and unmistakably happy.

“I love this,” Amara said.

“Me too.” I paused, then grinned. “And we still have four shots left.”

She raised an eyebrow. “We’ll have to make them count.”

Day 320: More Pictures

Two days later, we packed up the Polaroid and the last four shots of film and pointed the SUV toward the beach. The weather was on our side—sunny, not too humid, the kind of South Florida day that used to pack beaches elbow-to-elbow. Now it was just us and the sound of tires over sand-flecked pavement.

We started with the beach house. With photos on the agenda, we’d put on clothes. Amara stood barefoot on the front steps, one hand on her hip, the other shielding her eyes from the sun. I framed her in the shot, the little blue house behind her, a few sea grape leaves rustling in the breeze. Click. Whirr. The camera coughed out the photo, and we waited for it to develop like kids watching bread rise. When the image finally sharpened, Amara beamed. “This one’s going on the fridge.”

Next was the boat. We walked it down to the dock we’d claimed as our own, the one that miraculously survived the hurricane. Amara climbed aboard and struck a mock-heroic pose at the bow while I stood on the dock, holding the camera steady. Click. Whirr. The picture spat out, and I waved it in the air like that ever actually helped. When it came into focus, it was perfect: her grin wide, the boat angled just enough to catch the lettering on the side—Sol Mate, which we’d scrawled on it weeks ago as a joke and now couldn’t bear to change.

Then we headed out.

The ocean was calm, stretching flat and blue all the way to forever. We drifted for hours, anchored just off the inlet, the boat rocking gently. Amara curled up on the deck in her swimsuit, flipping through a paperback with her sunglasses sliding down her nose. I took that one without warning—click, whirr—and when she looked up and realized, she just laughed. “That better not be a bad angle.”

“It’s impossible to take a bad angle of you,” I said.

The final photo, we took together. Same setup as before—camera propped on a tackle box, timer string secured with fishing line. We sat side by side on the deck, backs to the bow, our legs stretched out in front of us, Amara’s head on my shoulder. When the shutter snapped, I didn’t even care how it would turn out. I just knew it had captured something real.

As the sun started dropping, we sat on the edge of the boat, feet dangling just above the water, the last photo developing between us.

When it came into view, we both smiled.

“We look happy,” she said softly.

“We are,” I said. “Right now, this is everything.”

Day 332: Progress in the Garden

It had been twenty-one days since we knelt in the dirt with seed packets and hope. Now, under the slanting light of late afternoon, Amara and I stood side by side, surveying the raised beds of our new medicinal garden. The soil was still soft from last night’s brief rain, and the smell of damp earth and crushed mint hung in the air. It felt good out here—alive.

Amara had her notebook in hand, already flipping to the page marked Medicinals – Day 21. She clicked her pen. “Let’s go one by one.”

We started with the echinacea. Each sprout had a pair of sturdy, jagged-edged leaves, deep green with a reddish-purple tinge to the stems. They were only a few inches tall, but upright and healthy. “These are going to be gorgeous,” she murmured, sketching a rough outline beside her notes.

Next to them, chamomile—daintier, thinner stems, with feathery, apple-scented foliage. There were dozens of sprouts clustered together like they were huddling up, and some of the larger ones already hinted at branching. I knelt beside them and pinched a leaf between my fingers. “Smells like tea already.”

Yarrow was showing slow but steady progress—tight clusters of finely cut, fern-like leaves. Silvery green. Hardy looking. “These’ll make great wound wash,” Amara said, writing that down.

Calendula was already the star of the show. Wide, fuzzy leaves, a little sticky to the touch, and a strong, almost resinous smell. A few plants had sent up a second set of true leaves. “I bet we’ll see blooms in another few weeks,” I said. “Can’t wait to try out that calendula salve.”

Then came garlic—rows of green shoots, stiff and straight, like little soldiers poking out of the dirt. The tips were sharp, some curling slightly. “These might take months,” Amara said, “but we’re off to a good start.”

The lemon balm was doing well too. Broad, lightly serrated leaves, already putting out that distinctive citrusy aroma. I bent down and ran a hand across the top of the patch. “This might be my favorite smell on Earth.”