A Secret Garden All My Own

February goes on forever.

It rains, and then it freezes, and then it rains again.

The roads look impassable in the morning’s new snow, and then it melts off by midday but there’s nowhere to drive anyway. Nothing’s open. Nothing looks like fun. The state park is too muddy to hike in safely. The playgrounds are too wet to play in.

The big box stores put all their Valentine chocolate on discount and are beginning to put out their seeds and gardening things, far too early. And this was making me depressed.

I love gardening more than I can say. All I want in the world is a house of my own on a triple lot like my beloved Grandfather had, with a little orchard on one side and strawberries by the backdoor, a grape alley behind the garage and a vegetable garden just over thataway. Gardening is my therapy. It’s how I like to help people, bringing my vegetables to the Friendship Room. It’s the best way I’ve found to pray.

But my menacing next door neighbor is still a problem.

In 2020, I dug up half the small yard of the tiny rental house to grow a Victory garden; I planted much more than I thought I’d eat so anybody hungry could have some. And the neighbor rampaged through it, destroying my broccoli patch and some of my strawberries, even carefully cutting the head off my sunflower and setting it on top of the compost heap. By the time I realized what was happening she’d also smeared her dog’s droppings all over my front porch. And then she went and decorated her own porch with beautiful potted plants to rub it in. When I re-planted, she threatened and menaced me until I was afraid to go outside.

In 2021, she stepped up her harassment immensely, abusing us until  I started having panic attacks setting foot in my own backyard. The police expected us to de-escalate. The judge at our hearing refused a restraining order.  The garden patch in the backyard was fallow. I couldn’t go out back. I couldn’t grow much of anything. I planted some herbs in plastic buckets on the porch, but it’s no fun to tend a tiny herb garden when you jump every time a door slams next door.

So far in 2022, she has made herself a worse pest than ever. And I am not doing well.

Every day I daydream about moving away from LaBelle to my dreamhouse, but daydreaming doesn’t make it true. I don’t even know how we’d come up with a security deposit, not even on a much smaller place.

The other day I went for a walk in the opposite direction to my usual one. Instead of going up towards the cliff’s edge to look at the view of downtown, I went down around the other way, just for a change.

The first thing that happened was that I slipped on a patch of glare ice and went down supine on the pavement, just across the street from the menacing neighbor’s house.

And then I slipped again, halfway down the side street. And then I decided to walk on the middle of the street, because it’s easier to jump out of the way of a car than it is to skate over frozen sidewalks in my walking shoes.

And then I walked past a vacant lot that had some new wooden garden beds on it.

I stared.

I think I’d heard that this place was a community garden, once upon a time. But it hadn’t been for awhile. The lot had been overgrown with weeds and poison ivy for years. Now the weeds were gone, and several new wooden raised garden beds had been built. They were the very kind of garden beds I’d like to build myself, if I ever had the money.

I walked home, in the middle of the road, avoiding the ice.

I checked in in the Buy Nothing Group, because it’s the only group of neighbors I belong to on Facebook. I asked if anyone knew anything about the vacant lot on the other street, and they did.

Later that day I got a message in my inbox. Yes, it was a community garden. They got a grant to fix it up last fall. They were going to have one last cleanup day in April and plant in May. The beds are eight feet by four. Would I like one?

And I said yes.

All of last week, I was sitting around my house, worrying, muttering to myself that if I didn’t get out of this neighborhood I was going to die.

All of this week I have been muttering to myself “The Hopi Black Dye Sunflower will go next to the Three Sisters patch. The Three Sisters Patch will still leave room for basil and tomatoes. Maybe I’ll grow the tomatoes in a hanging bag to save room and grow a broccoli.” I have been filling out an order from the free seed catalog. I have been looking up how to inoculate bean seed to get the most nitrogen back into the soil. I have been looking at catalogs of the most glorious odd-colored heirloom tomato plants, yellow tomatoes and stripey tomatoes and tomatoes with flecks of several colors like an opal. I haven’t been able to grow tomatoes for the longest time, neighbor or no neighbor, because Michael is allergic to the vines. They give him a worse rash than poison ivy. Now I can grow tomatoes at a safe distance without making anyone sick.

I am so happy I wouldn’t trade places with an angel.

That’s what gardening, and even the anticipation of gardening, does for my mental health.

This morning I heard my menacing neighbor banging around with her dog, and I didn’t even panic. I’ve tricked her. I have a garden, a secret garden all my own where she can’t get at it.

Better yet, a secret garden with like-minded neighbors who also love to grow things. Maybe even a secret garden with new friends.

It’s going to be all right.

Image via pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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