“I’ve occasionally lamented to folks who know me well, that I wish I could work in a public garden. Not to the exclusion of my other gardens, but more in the vein of if I had another life, I’d be born in England & study some botanical specialty, so that I could be hired to curate a mysterious, old garden at a castle on the coast of Cornwall. Or, falling short of that, be an old man in shabby trousers and a tweed coat with arm patches, rarely glimpsed or only by children, lurking behind the walls of a secret garden, leaning on a hoe, or smoking a pipe whilst gazing out over a prolific rose bush, at the sea. That said, what actually befalls us in life must be viewed metaphorically, as a gesture at least, towards the grandiose, or mythological. If not a castle, then something castle-like, in the same way we approximate mole-hills to be mountains, or Burger King, a top-shelf eatery. In our quest to stroll amongst and rub shoulders with the finest of a given genre, or locate signposts pointing towards the pinnacle of what we think life owes us, there it is, larger than life. In my case, situated on a 4-lane commuter highway, as I put my blinker on just in time to make the turn, into the empty parking lot, & there is was: Al’s French Fries. I’d left the house at 7:30 am, hoping to get a jump on the day, as by 11 am I knew, the customers would be flooding in. The expansive perennial gardens lay before me, or, rather, between the restaurant’s expansive front windows, and the commuter road. So much to do, I couldn’t, at first, imagine what to do .. first. A McDonald’s big Mac wrapper blew lazily across the lawn. One or two, then three, or four cigarette butts, a plastic soda lid and surgical mask sat dully below curbside - not my department, or ... possibly in my purview. Here clearly to weed, assess, fertilize, organize and otherwise empathize with a garden left to winter over, at the edge of multiple industrial parks, but here to pick up trash? The public part of public began to slowly sink in. I would do it in my own yard, I thought, for my own peace of mind. What, then, is the difference? Well, we all have a feel for that difference. And sometimes, in jobs, we have to overcome our distaste for human beings and transcend to a higher plane of reality. Focusing next on the actual plants, I began to realize how much work and care was in front of me, done previously by others. Winning the Burlington Garden Club’s top award in 2023, is no small feat. Who was I to shirk away from a little location complexity, car exhaust, and the constant smell of french fries for eight hours straight? But it was not going to be an easy trap drag, I could see that. As the lot filled up with vehicles for lunch, it seemed easiest to just dump crap into my truck bed. I would deal with all that later. I quickly learned that even the walk to my truck 15 feet away, was fraught with danger. People after french fries drive fast and pull off the highways as if their lives depended on it. Certainly mine did. After nearly being run over with my first bucket, I made a mental note not to drop off the curb without first looking both ways. I wasn’t the only one, trying to get from A to B here. The power company trucks flowed in a convoy, in and out, in and out, parking on the outer edges of Al’s lot, working with chain saws, despite a seeming lack of trees. Fighter jets deafened all air space, periodically, taking off from the nearby airfield, every half hour or so. No, it wasn’t the best day to listen to an audio book but the book wasn’t that good anyway. Flagmen and women walked in pairs chatting, not really working, not really not working. I wondered if they were able to become friends, on the job. I pulled my trucker’s cap down low, so I wouldn’t have to see anyone looking out the front windows at me. I would ignore them but put on a good show, of being a gardener - not hard. This is not my usual work environment, I remembered to think,, between the blast of air brakes from every semi, and constant roar of traffic. I remembered to remember that the garden would one day be amazing, and beautiful right in front of families eating burgers and babies slurping milk shakes. It was getting late. I finally pulled the behind the dumpsters, and dodged a few bad things left on the pavement. A half an hour of hauling my stuff between a humming electrical post and over-turned concrete pylons and into some kind of wasteland woods, and, voila! I was done. For the day. I would have to come back to do more. But tomorrow was another day. Crocuses were blooming in Barnard, so I went there instead.”
