Community Gardening

When I was a child in England it wasn't at all uncommon to drive past clumps of vegetables on the outskirts of small towns. They were little gardens on common land called allotments a place for city dwellers to get back in touch with nature, and subsequently eat it. The little tool sheds were also, by reputation, places where manly men could go and do manly man types of things away from the eyes of their all seeing wives. You could smoke a pipe, sharpen a blade, read the sports pages, and not get interrupted. Which is something I don't suppose anyone needs to bring up in the context of the new community garden in back of May Sands School on United Street, not least because the tool shed is small enough a man standing in it might be grounds for calling the fire department to extricate him.The garden is a thing of wonder to someone such as myself who is struggling to get vegetables to sprout at home. I was at May Sands doing a chore for my teacher wife when I spotted what had been a wasteland a few weeks ago. I had seen the raised beds going in but this was the first time I was exposed to such vigorous growth:This tomato plant is about as big as I am:And quite large enough to swallow a small boy whole:His proud grandfather confided in me, when I expressed my unbridled envy of such prowess, that he too couldn't grow a tomato to save his life. His grandson though had become an avid gardener thanks to the communal plots behind May Sands School.It was an educational experience wandering the rows of vegetables (and flowers) checking out techniques and ways of doing things:I was particularly fascinated by the beds made of cement blocks. Where I had built movable beds out of plywood and planks they seemed simple and solid and offered a strange and interesting new way to plant, in the blocks themselves:I like my wooden planters not least because they are portable as I am still looking for their final location around my house. No such doubts here apparently, and I will be back in the heat of summer to see what they are planting and what's growing. I saw a mother and two children picking up food as well as a woman silently and industriously plucking the evening meal out of the ground:I hate to say it, but there something very un-Key West about the community garden. In a city where hedonism is the superficial prevailing culture there is something sturdily peasant like and not Key West about the food on the table culture of this garden. I felt less alone in my quixotic attempt to grow my own food when I stood in the midst of all this successful effort:And there was no one to ask when I saw this, but I am glad someone is honoring this unknown gardener if he has anything at all to do with the creation of the project:The sun was setting and it was getting time to go, but it was hard to tear myself away and I wasn't alone in that:I checked the shed for unhappily married men but none were in evidence, and of course I admired the rain barrel collecting that precious rain water. Such a simple way to not waste water and so rare in the Keys, land of tropical rainfall:I have no idea which architect deserves to be shot for designing the abomination that is May Sands School, a building that resembles a nightmarish nuclear bunker with all its cement and bizarre roof supports and impossible angles:The building looks ugly but the garden has done a lot to cheer it up, make it look pretty in a way no architect seems able. Call it the Triumph of Nature.