Other People’s Gardens

Numenius and I have been housesitting in Village Homes, an eco-topic community built in the 1970s in Davis, California. The fronts of the houses face pedestrian walkways, not roads and cars; all the fruit trees are commonly owned; there is a large village green where we saw some children playing cricket (!) on Sunday; and the community vegetable gardens are lush and productive. The names of all the streets in this part of Davis are either places or characters from Lord of the Rings, which may have been an attempt to give them some kind of amulatory power against the evil cars (with mixed success). Originally this was the “alternative” place to live. Now houses sell within an hour of going on the market for staggering amounts. The demographic? Doctors with pony tails.

I have never really been much of a gardener, but I have been enjoying hauling out the weeds that have overtaken the front yard. Despite the origin of most of the inhabitants of this little paradise in 60s counterculture, overgrown weeds are not welcomed by neighbors. Neither, of course, is Round Up. So I have been getting sore hamstrings hauling them out by the roots. But I’ve been loving it… This is almost certainly because it’s not MY garden.

Perhaps we should all swap houses periodically so we can clean and weed with joy instead of dread. At any rate, the pink-and-green tulips in the raised bed that watch me, along with the Western scrub jay, while I furiously try and get the grasses out before they go to seed, are making this activity much more fun than it has any right to be.