2022 community garden

Jack Deatherage

(5/2022) Mom's people have lived around here since at least the late 1800s. Dad's people, since shortly after World War Two. Growing up on family stories about "old Emmitsburg" I was made aware there were families I shouldn't associate with. There were also shops I was not supposed to set foot in because our family "did not do business with those people". What I didn't understand was why I was supposed to avoid "those" people and places.

The first clue I got as to the why, was when Dad stopped doing business with a local shop after coming home from work fuming over a disparaging remark made by one of the shop's owners about Dad's professional diagnosis. (Dad was correct.) Years of being a loyal customer were undone in the blink of an eye. (Oddly, Dad never objected to my doing business with that shop until the day it closed.)

My first story, which I passed on to the offspring, is about a garage my future father in-law sent me to to get a machine part repaired. This was back in the mid 1970s when I wore my hair down to my shoulders. The garage owner took a look at me and started cursing before I could explain why I was there. Once he knew who'd sent me, he calmed down and did the repair. I never set foot in that place again. The disgusting treatment of a stranger was so deeply burnt into my brain that I refuse to set foot in the new business that now occupies that lot. (Following my Dad's example, I do not object to the DW patronizing the new business.)

It took decades, but I'd begun to understand my relatives' taboos.

Moving into town, I've had to change the way I think about people I can't avoid. Other than the business that sits where that garage was, I thought I'd shook most of my families' clannish thinking. Ha!

Last gardening season I came up $200 short of my needs. The DW had come to her senses after I'd blown through $500 and told me, "Enough!". In a panic, I leased a community garden plot for $20.

We planted over 100 gladiolus corms in that plot! A few days later I met one of the gardeners working the other plots.

"That is supposed to be my plot." I'm told as I'm watering said plot. "I've planted it the last several years." The gardener was not pleased.

"Oh?" Says I politely. "I was told it's mine for the season and I've already planted glad corms in it."

The gardener was even less pleased, but didn't push the issue, allowing someone at the town office must have made a mistake. We went on to have a pleasant chat about gardening.

I didn't see that gardener for the rest of the season, though a cucumber and a red pepper growing in tomato cages in their plot mysteriously appeared in my bean plot (I'd leased four plots by then) a day or two after one of my bean rows had been stripped of beans. I put the cuke and pepper back in their plot.

As I read my lease agreement - we weren't supposed to touch other gardeners' plantings. I didn't bother reporting the theft of my beans because I honestly couldn't say who'd stolen them.

I hadn't planned on ever leasing a plot at the community garden again. However, several passersby, that stopped to admire the giant sunflowers we'd grown, expressed a hope we'd plant even more interesting flowers the next year. Coupled with the hubbub the sunflowers seemed to cause at the library - the giants could be seen from the library's windows - we decided we'd lease as many plots as we could get in 2022. We'd plant some real oddballs (heirlooms) for people to look over on their ambles through the park. Entertaining people was more fun than the actual gardening. Hauling ten to twenty gallons of water to the plots every day or so was a bear!

So, 2022. I finally get around to playing with heirloom pea cultivars I've had for eleven years. No one had planted peas in the community garden last year, so I figured I'd chance growing some there and hopefully keep the strain pure. I contacted the town earlier than I had last year and was told we could begin planting the first of April - a good time for the peas. I sent $20 and a signed lease agreement to the town office. I was told the plot that had been disputed last season was available. The DW said "Take it." She wasn't sure she'd managed to get all the glad corms out of it during the October cleanup. She'd pull any that popped up this year.

We weeded that plot and sowed two short rows of presprouted 'Dwarf Gray Sugar' peas (an heirloom dating from the 1800s) along one end of the plot on the 5th of April. I pegged the empty seed packet to the ground with a metal staple so I'd know what we'd planted, and to alert any other gardener that we were working that plot. On the 14th we stopped by the garden to see if the peas were up. They were. However, someone had removed the seed marker and tossed it over by the fence. Two familiar tomato cages were in our plot.

I replaced our row marker, but decided to contact the town office before I removed the tomato cages. I was sure a simple misunderstanding was under way.

Well, I was sure until I thought I saw the other gardener at the post office on my way home. The person stared at me as I tried to puzzle out where I'd seen them before. As they passed me, their lips curled into a self-satisfied smirk. If that was the lease jumping gardener I knew the town was probably going to take their side in any dispute I might pursue, and I'd not argue the point.

I've been on good terms with the town staff and won't ruin that over some odd duck's need to garden a specific plot. Hell, I'm a weirdling, I get it. I ended up sending an email to the town office explaining the situation and asking for my lease payment to be returned. Which is ironic given I'd planned to lease more plots if they were available when I began the walk to the garden that morning!

The town Office Coordinator and Town Manager (may the gods bless them and theirs) apologized for the inconvenience and offered me the pick of the remaining plots. Had the suspected lease jumper not smirked in passing, I'd have taken the offer and leased as many plots as I could. But that smirk is snuggled up against the garage owner's cursing.

The clannish reaction to even slight offenses runs marrow deep after all. The gardener and the community garden are dead to me. Which brings to mind something a local farmer has said to me more than once - "It is what it is. But why the hell do you live in that town?

Well, I am an idiot. Ya know?