My office mate, pal, and podcast co-host Rin Tara and I switched things up for this week’s episode of our Water Matters! podcast, with Rin interviewing me about the Berrens-Fleck project Ribbons of Green. Among other things, Rin zeroed in on “gardens,” a theme that sits at the heart of the book. From the introduction:

In Voltaire’s classic satirical eighteenth-century novel Candide, the title character and his fellow travelers settle into a simple division of duties after a chaotic life. They act collectively on a small plot of land, producing “plentiful crops” and pursuing a common goal. Candide’s final wisdom is famously and most often translated from the original French as follows: “Let us cultivate our garden.” But modern translations of Voltaire’s “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” suggest a broader interpretation, with the garden not as the plot of land behind the house but as a more expansive landscape: We must work our land. Translating jardin as fields or land points toward not just one’s personal space but also the larger community.

We think of hoes, shovels, and rakes as the implements of our gardens, as our tools. But the expansive form of the noun—Candide’s fields, the Rio Grande Valley as our Kent, the grand Garden of New Mexico—calls for something more, a reliance on collective action. It is impractical for me to build a levee around my house to protect it from flooding or my own bridge to cross the river, and without the cooperation of my neighbors, I am powerless to drain a swamp encroaching on my back garden.

Rin and I had lots of fun making the podcast, I hope you enjoy it.