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Posts tagged as 'greywater'
Saw a fella out in my garden today. He’s tall and blond, riding one of those fixed gear 10-speeds that are all the rage with the kids today. I walked my bike from out back and started my 12 block commute to my office.
“Excuse me, who owns this lot?” he said.
“I do,” I lied. But you know, I feel like it’s mine. If you garden it, don’t you own it? A guy from Maine told me that if you plant a garden, the owner can’t uproot it. State law. Anyway, so I’m lying and he’s wondering.
“Do you need help?” he said.
Where was this man five years ago when I was building the beds? Hauling the manure?
Feeling a little like the Little Red Hen, I told him I mostly have it under control.
“There’s a lot of bare soil,” he said, and leaned back on his bike.
I’m a journalist, so I enjoy lots of criticism (from editors, and later, readers) but I do get defensive when a stranger makes comments about my gardening technique. And I started to wonder: Why am I getting defensive about my garden with this random jack-ass who I don’t even know?
In the last year or so I’ve had so many more visitors to the garden. I can’t tell if it’s my neighborhood getting gentrified or an upsurge of interest in urban gardening or the blog. I recently had two wonderful sisters come by the garden and offer their help. But they never mentioned my bare soil (which is being watered every day in anticipation of the beet, corn, and carrot seeds I buried there a few days ago).
Eventually I invited them to build their own raised beds. One of the sisters even followed a hastily drawn map to the stables where I get my treasure trove of ...
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