I was in my garden last Sunday afternoon. I was pulling a yucca plant that I mistakenly planted in one of my garden beds years ago.  At the time, I was mixing flowers and veggies in one of my many raised beds. The garden then was a shadow of its current self, expanding in several directions through the decades. It now encompasses 1/6 of an acre and is dedicated to producing vegetables. Last year, the yucca shoots mingled among the leeks.

For years now, I have been hacking at the plant to eradicate it from the bed. Being a desert plant the roots are deep and it always comes back, usually with numerous small shoots. Each time I cut though, I am starving it of its growing ability, demanding that it put more energy into forcing green shoots to reach the sun.

So for a quote that I choose because I relate so completely with my garden, I find this story of the yucca appropriate to Margaret Atwood's work.   Writing about the suffering of women in dystopian realities, as in Atwood's classic "The Handmaiden's Tale,"  the roots and tenacity of her characters run as deep as my yucca plant.

And they too are survivors.

For Atwood's profile on the Poetry Foundation, click here 

Her website is https://margaretatwood.ca/