If you’ve never had that feeling of being stood up, then consider yourself lucky. What does it feel like? After the first few minutes, one tries to imagine that the date is stuck in traffic. Maybe he was reeled into a conversation that he could not politely untangle himself from. Then, as time ticks by one might become annoyed, perhaps angry. Then comes the guilt. What if he was in an accident? What if he was sick? One begins to feel selfish for being annoyed in the first place. And then he shows up. He offers a brief apology and then says he has only a few minutes. (Very Big from SATC) But this is the modern age, right? If a person is delayed by about half an hour, he can make a phone call to express his regret for being late.
Last night was the annual community garden tour. For the past week or so I had been visiting my spot in the West End Garden to make sure that it was respectable if the tour happened by there. I had been planning to go to the Niles Street garden at 5:30 to participate, but a friend with a plot at the Affleck Street garden said that he had been asked to be in his garden at 6 for when the tour came around. I was running late, it was hot, and his garden was a five minute walk as compared to the twenty minute sweatfest that going to Niles Street would be. I opted to join him and figured I could always join the group for the rest of the tour.
At the site, I helped spruce up a few plots that had been neglected for a few days. To get into this garden, one needs a key (or the willingness to jump a fence) which makes it difficult for gardeners who do not have keys (yet?). We pulled out the dead stuff and gave the plots a good soaking. Despite the ever-present litter around the edges of the garden and the rarely mowed common areas, the garden is doing well. There’s squash, zucchini, tomatoes (not too much blight here), callaloo, peppers, corn, cucumbers, spinach, chard, carrots, beans, flowers, and plenty of plants I can not identify. When the woman who unofficially coordinates the garden arrived, she said that at the last minute, Knox Parks decided that this garden would be the last stop on the tour, pushing it back to 7. That might not seem like a big deal, but the group of Somali refugees who had been tending most of the spots in this garden, had chosen to wait for the tour to come by before they would get a late start to an important solemn personal event. It was clearly a difficult decision. I was handed a photocopied magazine article about this family who had successfully grown and sold produce up in Lewiston, Maine. If you do an online search for this, you will find a number of articles from Newsweek to an MIT publication.
As 7pm came and went, the disappointment in the gardeners’ eyes was evident. In the past, children threw stones at some of the Somali refugees who were gardening here. Despite this, they returned to the garden. The Affleck Street Garden has been treated as a local miniature dumping ground, to say the least. At the start of the season, while cleaning the plots and readying them for the compost-mulch mixture, I personally removed dimebags and bits of glass that had been thrown here. The grass clippings pile is filled with snack wrappers and beverage containers. This would never fly in other gardens. To keep the garden even this clean, a lot of work goes into it.
Around 7:15, someone called the Knox Parks phone number posted on the Affleck Street Garden sign to express the general disappointment about what looked to be a major snubbing. A message was left on the machine. Nobody called to say that the tour would be significantly later than planned. About ten minutes later, we got ready to leave. Just as we were heading out the gate, the bus arrived. One of the “tourists” told me they stopped at five sites before this one. That’s one extra garden than was advertised and planned for, if this person’s counting abilities are not flawed. I overheard the garden tourists get told that they could look for “two minutes” and then they’d have to go. Two minutes. Is there any better way to treat people like an afterthought?
Actually, there is.
After speaking with the unofficial coordinator/community organizer/tireless cheerleader/local librarian, it seemed that this was standard. She had mentioned the need for more secure locks on the gates after dogs had been allowed in the garden. The common areas appeared to have been mowed/weed whacked once this entire summer. During a past community garden clean-up, there were volunteers at the garden, but no tools. When Knox Parks was asked about this, the response was that the tools were at all of the other gardens. Only months after the compost delivery did anyone ask about it being delivered. According to the Knox Parks garden brochure, there is no official coordinator for this garden. Heck, up until recently, Affleck Street was not even included on the community garden list downloadable from the website.
It’s unfortunate that an organization that has the capacity to foster community and improve the environment can act so mindlessly sometimes.
