Gardening - Part II

In front of our apartment, separating 2 one-way streets is a long narrow triangle of 'garden'.  At the wide end grow some scraggly oleanders and a yucca or two - also straggly.  An under-story of nettles and mallow appears to get an annual topping by a local-authority clean-up team, and the earth gets scraped bare.


At its narrow end the garden has a sad variegated aloe, a scruffy hibiscus and a half buried concrete pot that might have been meant to be a design element.  Otherwise that end had even more nettles, mallow, oxalis, grass, purslane and silver-leafed nightshade (according to season) and also got a once yearly scrape back to concrete-hard bare earth.

Enter F.  She had read about guerrilla gardening.  She started after dark.  She cleared a bit round that concrete pot and planted some daisies.  She spread some of our homemade compost.

I supervised from a discreet spot under the oleander.  People walk dogs at night.

Nothing happened.  The world did not end.  No one got arrested.  There were no placard waving protesters.  Maybe no one even noticed.

But Someone had noticed.

She cleared a bit each night and mulched the weeds under the oleanders.  Then, one weekend in broad daylight, she threw all caution to the wind, back-packed me and parked me under the oleander to supervise and really went mad digging out nettles and mallow plants.

A few days later something did happen - Someone stole the daisies overnight.  Also under cover of darkness, the plants that were just beginning to flower nicely, disappeared.  F noticed on her way to work next morning.  She'd been warned she was wasting her time and that the plants would be stolen, so she could hardly gripe about it.  However, she didn't have time to gripe about it - on her way home that same day she discovered that the garden had been replanted, all over, this time with daisies and succulents taken from the beach.

No one stole those and every day more contributions would appear - pieces of geranium, aloes, tradescantia, succulents, begonias  - all pieces that appeared to have been scavenged and poked in.

F weeded around them.  F watered them.  The geraniums took root.  F sowed some seeds and put out gazania seedlings she had raised on the balcony.  The sad variegated aloe produced lots of baby side plants and new growth.  A hibiscus in a pot was left on the garden, then a huge pot full of aloe pieces.  They all went in.  Some old chitted potatoes were left out and got planted.  F sowed some pumpkin seeds underneath the oleander, then beans, then nasturtiums.

One morning when F was watering geraniums a small elderly lady stopped by and held out at length (and in Greek) about where the water should go.  She had put in all these plants, and on this day produced some peppermint and directed where it should be planted.  F had her reservations about this one - mint needs water, a Greek summer was on its way.

Then in June, F went to New Zealand.