Gus the Garden Guy

As previously mentioned, Beau and I scored a coveted community garden plot. It's a bit smaller than the area we're used to vegetable gardening in, but we're happy to have it. The people who run the various gardens around town stress how much it's not just about people making their own food, or supplying local food pantries, but also about the sense of community in the garden -- talking to your garden neighbors and local neighbors, making friendships, etc.

Though there's nothing wrong with chumming up with your neighbor, and I consider Beau and I to be pretty friendly people (Beau could talk to a total stranger for hours, especially if he's a senior citizen), I can't get into the whole "community" thing. I didn't get a garden plot to make friends, or for the upcoming potluck, or any of that stuff. I got a garden because one of my favorite things to do in the world is to be deep in the dirt with Beau *wink wink* and to grow vegetables. We just planted our first veggies and as we were walking away, I kept turning back to look at them. When we had our large garden in Missouri, I used to just sit out there and stare at the garden. I'd just let me eyes scan over the glorious tomato plants, the twisting and turning peas and beans, the colorful sprite that was the Thai chili plants, the towering and flowering cilantro, the wildly prolific mint, and all the other sensuous and fragrant herbs, particularly the basil. It felt good to watch these things grow, and then later to use them in all of our Thai, Italian, and American dishes coming out of the kitchen.

It's almost to the point of being a very personal and private thing, which is why I'd get so incensed at the squirrels carting off my precious tomatoes before I could pick them myself. It was insulting to put so much work into something you love and then have it ripped away from you.

So far in our current garden, we've made polite conversation with the various people, mostly of the young hippie type growing food organically for themselves. But nothing can top our encounters with Gus. A cartoon character come to flesh, if we ever did see one.

He's freakishly similar to Popeye in appearance, including the squinting eye and gravely voice, yet the tooting pipe is absent. Instead, Gus stuffs a good amount of chew into his pie hole. This is one of my favorite characteristics about him, since while talking with you, he will repeatedly spit out a pocket of the dark juice, with impressive distance though probably not accuracy. A satisfying *pttt* sound accompanies each exodus (sadly, no *ding* accompanies). He's also a veteran (is Popeye a navy veteran or just a plain ol' "sailor man?").

Basically, Gus owns the community garden we inhabit. He already possesses several plots (including several more at some of the other gardens), and he very clearly spends a large amount of his time there. He knows everyone and every blade of grass in the area. When we first arrived, and were asking about the various mammoth piles of dirt (compost, poop, new dirt, old dirt, etc.), he fixed us with a very wary eye and questioned us carefully. We didn't know what to make of him, and finally at some point of the conversation he figured out we actually owned a plot, his entire demeanor changed and suddenly we were all best friends. That was a good, and bad thing.

Gus is chatty, and proceeded to give us a FULL-ON education on the community garden and gardening in general. Some of it was interesting, some of it we already knew (this ain't our first rodeo!), and some of it was discouraging. After a half hour of one person talking TO you, most things stop being interesting at all. One of our biggest obstacles seems like it will be the neighborhood children, which careen around the garden on their wobbly bikes in packs of 2-5. Gus told us how anything they can pick and eat, they will (tomatoes, raspberries, pumpkins, etc.). Last year almost all pumpkins, carrots, and strawberries were stolen, and you have to pick your tomatoes while still a light red color and just stick them in your window and hope they ripen nicely. DEPRESSING! At least with the squirrels I could live-trap them and re-locate them! Also depressing since I have both a gooseberry and red current bush I'd love to plant, but would be heartbroken if they were picked clean, what with little berries they will produce. I was hoping to get enough berries to make ONE gooseberry pie this year. We'll see.

I stopped by the garden the other day just to water the few things we've planted (we've been told repeatedly that the ground will be "too cold" until the end of May for most things - like my 7 beloved tomato plants impatiently sitting on the window ledge in the living room). I then walked back to the shed to drop off the watering can and go home. I was still in my fancy schmancy work clothes and in no condition to do much else. Then I made a mistake. I asked Gus a question.

I can't remember now what it was. It was a minor question, but something I just wanted to know, car keys in hand, just before I left.

I was there another 20 minutes. Gus regaled me with tales, pointed out another girl at the garden and informed me several times that they "don't get along" but then went on and on about her giant, beautiful tomatoes (that were picked and promptly dumped on the ground by children - one of which he picked up and ate). He went on and on about the kids again, and told me how there are mothers in the neighborhood with maps of the garden who will direct their kids through walkie-talkies (yes, he swears this happens) to particular plots to pick things she wants. Great. Writing this now it sounds like a bunch of crap, but I believed him when he told me (twice).

The whole time he not only was spitting away, but simultaneously wielded a very scary garden implement with three spikes that he kept enthusiastically waving so dangerously close to my eye, I grew quite alarmed and kept taking a step back. He showed me his onions (yuck) and garlic (yum) and the leaf piles and the stone piles and even a wild purple plant that grows around the non-plot areas of the garden that you can pick and eat (I did try it, and admit it was rather tasty). Finally, when I was just on the verge of telling him, "I gotta go!" he suddenly bowed and saluted, said something along the lines of "That's my story and I'm stickin' to it", and dismissed me. He was gone in a flash like a superhero, or well, Popeye.

Sheesh, and I almost forgot -- his entire speech is peppered with some really raunchy curse words -- something I kind of enjoy. I've always delighted in curse words in general, as long as they're done with taste, of course. When Gus is yapping along for awhile, he'll just throw in a few choice words here and there which kinda surprise you like being poked in the side. I don't know if I'm imaging things, or if it's just because Beau and I haven't been out much with other people in a social, relaxed sense, but people don't seem to curse much around here. It's deep into my own vocabulary, and I find myself censoring myself. No need with good ol' Gus.

Nevertheless, after recovering quickly from Popeye Gus' startling exit, I felt a sense of relief and then left. Beau and I plan on going there tonight. It should be an interesting summer.