The Garden At The End Of Time

John Hanson Mitchell has long written about his garden outside of Boston, and about the plants and animals with whom he shares this land. In 2022, the United Nations and others started reporting the true severity of the climate crisis as the Earth passed a point of no return. All across the globe it was the worst year on record for climate-related disasters, including extinctions, deadly floods, massive fires, and dramatic droughts. Mitchell, like so many, felt overwhelmed. He looked to the story of Voltaire’s Candide, and settled on the famous aphorism from that book: “We must cultivate our garden.”The Garden at the End of Time features Mitchell’s trademark blend of science, literature, and anecdote as he processes both the information he is reading from various sources and what it prompts him to do in his own small corner of the world. The story that unfolds is one of Mitchell diversifying his plantings, fighting what he sees as unnecessary local development, walking through and...