But the garden also has a dark side. That dark side is the other gardeners. At the beginning last year when we bought the garden, everyone seemed really nice and presented us with such welcome gifts as rhubarb plants, flowers to plant, herbs and seedlings. People would walk by and comment on how nice everything looks, since the previous gardener hadn't done any actual gardening for a number of years. That was eventually his downfall, he didn't do the required work. In garden clubs like this you MUST garden, or you're history. So they kicked him out.
The honeymoon phase ended quickly, though, and I began to see why gardeners are scorned by the rest of the population.
The gifts and kind words took an abrupt end with the onset of fall. We stopped going to the garden after we covered the roses and tore out the last remains of the vegetable plants. What should we do there? That's when the not-so-gentle motivational speeches started from next door. In a feeble attempt at making small talk with our neighbor, who is the husband of the (former) cashier and vice chair or vice president of our garden street, the master gardener in the family mentioned how cold it was and how he had nothing to do in the garden in the winter. To which the neighbor replied in a gruff voice, "Well, you could take all that wood you have lying around from cutting down the bushes to the collection station". To which the Master Gardener scoffed and replied: "Why should I pay money to get rid of it when I can burn it?"
Let me note: All those evergreen branches that they thought were randomly strewn around the garden were actually generously covering our rosebushes and other plants, which did not freeze last winter. Our neighbors´ roses were obviously covered rather carelessly, because they all froze.
This was just the beginning.
All of a sudden, those jokes and snide remarks about "Kleingärtner" were beginning to make sense. You see, people like to make jokes about members of gardening clubs like the one we belong to, because they are very attentive to details like the height of your hedges, just what you're pouring or spraying on your plants, what amount of fruits and vegetables you have planted and what time of day and what day of the week you mow your grass or do any other loud activities. Since we weren't dotting our I's and crossing our T's quite like they thought we should, we were beginning to be treated like little children who needed some guidance. That quickly changed to shunning and outright yelling, but I'll get to that soon enough.
The Master Gardener found a source of free horse manure, and when springtime rolled around, he started hauling manure to the garden every weekend, making several large mounds. It was too early to plant, but we had big plans, so we also required large amounts of poo. This attracted the curious and bemused stares of the neighbor in question. It also attracted catcalls from 2 of our 3 neighbors that "You don't want to overfertilize your garden!" But almost directly following their derisive remarks, Neighbor 1 requested some manure for himself, and suggested that maybe we could give Neighbor 2 some manure, since we have so much. We shared with Neighbor 1, because we wanted to foster good relations, but not with Neighbor 2, since he didn't ask himself.
Things were relatively quiet for quite a while, until we stupidly decided to take a vacation right in the middle of a very important gardening time: early summer. Neighbor 1 was friendly enough to agree to water the garden (and the expert nearly drowned our plants, but they survived). Upon the Master Gardener's return, however, he proceeded to yell at him because he didn't know, wasn't informed or maybe just couldn't remember because of his numerous drunks how long he would be gone. Shortly following this debacle, new water lines had to be installed. The workers trampled our new asparagus patch, leading to cursing and swearing from the Master Gardener. Neighbor 1 basically called him stupid for planting so much stuff in the garden in the first place and said it was his own damn fault. Before the next visit from the workers, the Master Gardener cordoned off large areas of the garden, creating a clear path for the workers to follow. This was also the wrong thing to do, because we "shouldn't force them to walk so far, they have work to do," according to Neighbor 1. So they should trample our potatoes and asparagus? When it would literally take 2 more seconds for them to walk on the path? Hmm.
Things have reached the boiling point in the last couple of weeks. We had visitors, and they must have overlooked the speed limit sign, because they drove a little too fast in the garden colony. I told them that they need to drive slower, because we also used to get in trouble with the neighbors for driving too fast. Later in the evening, just as they were getting ready to leave, Neighbor 1 appeared from his drinking corner to yell at us over his hedge, "Tell your visitors to slow down! They can't drive so fast in here! The limit is 10 km/hour, not 50! There are kids who play in here, and what about your own kids?" This went on and on, and we told him that we'd already told them, and that it won't happen again, etc, etc, but he just wouldn't stop. Not pleasant. So our guests had some fun with it, and rather than driving their car away, they pushed it away from our garden! I'm sure the neighbors were not amused.
Lots of statements like "I could help you with that, but you just don't want to hear it" and "I could tell you how to fix your greenhouse so that the panels don't blow out, but you just don't want to know" have been made in the last weeks. The drunken rants have also continued. Last year the neighbor's drunkenness just led to friendly talkativeness, this year it's leading to aggression.
The next interesting twist was a week or so ago, when Neighbor 2, who is famous for drinking canned beer, became the subject of some gossip. We had a visit from another gardener on our street, who carefully approached the subject of Neighbor 2. We're not his biggest fans because he likes to listen to a crappy radio station really loudly and his girlfriend has a staring problem, and as this became clear, the other gardener quietly stated with distaste, "Well, I've observed him peeing over there in the corner outside of his garden." He also greeted Neighbor 1 and his wife with "Mr. and Mrs. Neighbor 1" rather than their first names. Later we found out that they can't stand each other. After our visit, Neighbor 2, aka Canned Beer, arrived at his garden. Upon the sound of many beer cans opening, I peered through our meter-wide wall of sunflowers to see Neighbor 1 and his wife joining Canned Beer for a cold one and some grilled bratwurst.
Following this visit we reaped yet another telling-off from Neighbor 1 because of our sunflowers. They're hanging a half meter into Canned Beer's garden! We can't expect him to accept that! To which the Master Gardener replied: "Well, he can cut off whatever hangs into his garden. That's the rule, isn't it?" What did we find upon our next trip to the garden? A little pile of leaves from our plants that Canned Beer had cut off and placed on our side of the fence. This lead to the Master Gardener going to the fence and brutally snapping off all of his branches that were on our side.
The latest conversation between the Master Gardener and the husband of the now-dethroned cashier and vice president of our garden street took a comic turn. Yesterday evening, the Gardener was picking some zucchinis which he hadn't picked the day before, only to have Neighbor 1 request some of our zucchinis for themselves, and Neighbor 1 just couldn't resist commenting how small our zucchinis are. Master Gardener replied that yes, it's possible for them to get quite large, but then they don't taste good, Neighbor 1 continued to make fun of our garden because we just have a lot of big leaves on our plants and no fruits, and anyway you can't even see all the weeds in all those big leaves and then stated that he's already had 40 kilograms of cucumbers. The Master Gardener laughed and said, "What should I do with that many cucumbers? I can't eat them all, and my compost pile isn't big enough for the rest." This was met with a blank stare, a pause, and, "Well, I gave a bunch of them away, and I eat cucumber salad for lunch and dinner every day."
Since we have no political motivations for good relations with Neighbor 1 and his wife, we can have our fun. You see, Neighbor 1's wife was cashier and vice president until last weekend. The previous president of our street had decided to step down from his post due to health problems, and had given Neighbor 1's wife a statement to post on the bulletin board several weeks ago. She didn't do this, supposedly due to her own interest in becoming president. This was all explained in a speech at the street-wide meeting, Neighbor 1's wife broke down in tears, stepped down from her position as cashier and vice president and didn't even run for a new position in the new election. Since they don't like the new president, we don't have to worry about them breathing down our necks as vice-president or anything else.
The rest of the summer should prove to be amusing.
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