The Neighbors Ain't Never Seen Nuthin' Like This Before

It's been about six months since Sean and I moved to Valatie. We were thrilled to move to a place on a quiet, dead-end street, with a yard and a real kitchen. The landlord was thrilled to have two "normal" tenants that actually paid the rent. It was a win-win situation for both parties. 

When we met with Bill and toured the house, I know what Bill saw: two "young professionals"; one a bank manager, the other a network security engineer; both quiet, reserved, polite. We sure were a change from the previous tenants that he was in the process of evicting. And hey, I clean up pretty nice in my bank clothes, and I certainly know how to interview. We were approved almost as soon as we submitted the application to live here.

Winter came and went. It wasn't exciting. There was no snow. It was warm. I only had to shovel once and park my car in the garage a handful of times. Most of all, it was quiet. Work, school, cook. Work, school, cook. Our elderly neighbors never saw us really, and we never saw them. We didn't hear much from Bill. Time passed.

Uter wonders where all the grass is. 

He hasn't eaten any and puked it up on the carpet in a while.

Then, it was April. There's nothing that wakes me up quite like spring. It must be the Treadwell in me-- my body knows it's time to smash the last of the ice off dad's pond with the raft and jump in the water. It knows it's time to be barefoot, even though there's still a little snow on the ground. It knows when it's time to be outside pawing in the mud. And this year, we had a REAL yard. I asked Bill if he would mind if I planted a garden behind the house-- and he didn't care. Excellent. 

I'm not quite sure Bill understood that when I plant a garden, I plant a garden. None of this sissy garbage. Go big or go home. And to do that, you need some good, quality Delaware County cow turds. My dad and my pal Mark are always happy to oblige my cravings for feces, and trucked up three tons (yes, three TONS) of manure, an hour and 40 minutes, to my house.

Those are some good quality turds, right there.

Sean helped me shovel that pile into an OCD rectangle-- but not until after it sat a few days in the yard and made the neighbors wonder what the hell we were doing. Gotta keep 'em in suspense, you know? 

And then, I planted. Half the garden would be "big plants." The other half, plants started from seed. This is when the neighbors really started checking out my project.

May 22nd. Plants are in the ground.

The garden, at this point, looked awesome enough to warrant a visit from the neighbor-- I think he was pretty impressed with our sweaty progress. This was only just the beginning-- I had only planted the flats of veggies I had purchased from Samascott's-- the seeds were still spread out in their bags over the kitchen table. 

I worked on the seeds a few days later.

When the seeds started coming up, the neighbor started coming over to visit and check out the garden more often.

He offered me some fence posts and a sledgehammer to pound them in. The woodchucks, he assured me, would eat everything before I even got a chance to weed. I guess here in the 'burbs, where it's not appropriate to blast the entrails of woodchucks ten feet with a .308, a fence would have to do. In my procrastination, I haven't set it up yet-- instead, I chase rabbits out of the yard by running after them, screaming, with my arms flailing in the air. 

So much for that quiet, reserved banker they all thought I was.

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It's been a month since I planted the garden, and it's looking pretty sweet. I mean, I doubt there is anyone else in Valatie with a garden that looks this awesome. They just don't have the Delaware County cow turds that I've got in my yard.

The neighbor recognizes how awesome my stuff is, too, and yesterday, not only did he come over to check it out, he dragged his wife over with him. Seeing that I didn't have the fence up yet, they wanted to know how I was keeping animals out. (They pretended that they didn't see me running and screaming like a psychopath in the backyard after the rabbit last week). 

That's when I told them I planned to shoot the rabbit with a slingshot. And that afterward, I planned to eat it. 

I fully expected them to recoil in disgust. Instead, they offered me a trap as plan B-- and told me to use it, because rabbit is delicious. Man, I love these neighbors. I'm going to have to bake them some cookies or something.

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for my slingshot from Amazon.com, they brought me over a tin pie plate to tie up. "The reflection and the noise will keep the rabbits out." Sweet.

I love growing a garden. The end product-- the veggies-- is only part of the reason I do it. Working on it is a relaxing escape from wanting to throw myself off a cliff all day my job. And now, I've totally loving the attention I'm getting from it. It's so cool that the old neighbor seems as invested in its success as I am-- and honestly, I think if he looked out and saw the rabbit in it, he'd probably run out after it screaming like a psycho too.