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June
Married Community Gardener ISO Friends with
Vegetables
This will come as a surprise to my friends and
former teachers who are familiar with my general
attitude toward hard work and delayed
gratification, but I'm planting some apple trees in
my yard this spring. This is a big step for me.
I've never even planted perennials before. I just
didn't feel ready for the kind of long-term
commitment that asparagus and rhubarb demand, to
say nothing of trees that probably won't make any
apples until my kids are in high school. The
thought of digging in and working hard now for a
potential benefit that won't even start for 4 or 5
years -- I didn't think I had it in me. Sounds like
college, and I remembered how that worked out.
But having recently moved to a place where I
hope to put down some roots, I've decided to put
down some roots. And to show you how much I've
changed since college, I've been studying
diligently about organic fruit growing. From all
this reading I have retained one key tip: If you
have only one variety of apple tree, it won't
produce much fruit. You need cross-pollination
among a diverse community of trees for maximum
benefit in the orchard.
The same secret to success applies in a
community garden. Not so much to the plants,
although a wide variety of vegetables makes for a
healthy garden ecosystem. But when the different
kinds of squashes pollinate each other, a volunteer
vine will sprout from your compost pile the next
season and produce a zucchumpkin or some other
splotchy, inedible hybrid that's as odd but not
nearly as much fun as a labradoodle. So the concept
applies more to the people. As we've all seen in
countless ways, the greatest strength of a
community garden is the diversity of the gardeners,
each of whom brings a unique set of skills,
experiences, backgrounds, personalities, recipes
and jokes, producing a garden that is much more
fruitful and fun than it would be if we all had
more in common.
But digging holes for fruit trees gives you
plenty of time and incentive to stop and think, and
I've started to wonder how far the analogy goes.
I'm playing matchmaker out there, after all,
setting up trees I think are compatible with each
other. Love is literally in the air in the orchard
and the garden, in every grain of pollen floating
on the breeze or catching a ride on a honeybee's
leg in hopes of hooking up with just the right
female flower. We always talk about the friendships
that form in a community garden. But in such a
sensual place, do more intimate bonds naturally
form among the gardeners too?
I don't know the answer personally, because I'm
lucky enough not to be on the dating scene anymore.
But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that love
connections are being made in the garden. To find
out, I conducted some research on various online
dating sites. (If my wife checks my Internet
browsing history, I'm going to have some splainin
to do.) As I suspected, community gardens are
widely recommended as popular date
destinations.
For example, a website that gives dating advice
for divorced dads (which looks especially bad on my
"Favorites" list) encourages older guys reentering
the market to eschew the bar scene and head for the
neighborhood community garden. And even a site with
dating tips for teens lists community gardens as a
fun place for young people to hang out, albeit well
down the list below bowling, miniature golf, and
factory tours.
Another website, yourtango.com, claims community
gardening will make you more attractive to other
singles (after a shower, presumably). Apparently
your image as an environmentally conscious,
community-minded altruist appeals to potential
partners. "Plus," the site generalizes, "urban
farmer dudes are super hot."
Present company excepted, of course. But just as
some dimly lit bars are known as meat markets,
sunny community gardens are total vegetable
markets! What with all the pollen-drenched
honeybees diving into flowers and the vines
intertwining with each other and the glistening
fruits, the charged atmosphere of a garden makes it
the perfect place to put humans in the mood for
love. You can't help thinking about the birds and
the bees when they're flying all around your
head.
By recommending it as a good place for a nervous
couple to relax and overcome the stress of a first
date, these websites recognize the amazing power of
a community garden to break down the social and
physical barriers that often prevent us from
getting to know other people in our community. We
each have our own space in the garden, but there
are no fences between the plots, only pathways
leading from one to another. This makes it easier
to form relationships, and not just romantic ones.
None of our superficial differences matter, because
we immediately have important things to talk about,
like why it's so hard to germinate carrot seeds,
what to do with all the zucchini, and so on.
So even if you don't find romance in the
community garden this season, you are sure to hang
out with a group of really fun, interesting and
diverse people, and you will improve each other and
the garden through cross-pollination. The more
experienced growers will happily impart their
knowledge of gardening (and life), and the new crop
of gardeners will enrich the soil with fresh energy
and excitement. And when you leave for the day,
they will all probably share some fresh, healthy
food with you. Now that's what I call friends with
benefits.
© 2011 John
Hershey
Other Father Issues,
Books
* * *
Parents are the bones on which children sharpen
their teeth. - Peter Ustinov
John Hershey
is a dad, a writer, and a lawyer (in that order).
He writes a syndicated biweekly humor column about
parenting and family life.. His columns have been
published or accepted for publication on websites
and in magazines around the world, from Maine to
Oregon, Colorado down to Texas, and down under in
Australia.
Blood, Phlegm & Bile:
Parenting with Humor appears monthly on
menstuff.org. But, why the gross title? Well, for
one thing these are three substances with which
every parent becomes quite familiar. They were also
called the "humors" by medieval scientists who
believed that the proportion of these bodily fluids
determined a person's health and temperament. So
it's a pun! A pun requiring a lengthy explanation,
but a pun nonetheless. E-Mail
and RakishWit.com
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