The last couple of years I've noticed an influx of twenty-something gardeners in the Fenway.  I'd even thought about pitching a story to a couple of local magazines — something along the lines of horticultural hipsterism, garden geekery, that kind of thing — but not surprisingly the more of them I encountered in the Victory Gardens, the less interested in them I became. They were on the whole aloof if not outright unfriendly, uncomfortably self-conscious when cornered, and there seemed to be some disconnect where the community aspect of community gardening came in.

When I talk about community I don't mean being all up in each other's shit.  But with a couple exceptions, the hipsters didn't even bother to attend the annual meeting of the garden society of which they are members, a ritual complete with Robert's Rules of Order that we go through in the dead of winter mostly for the familiar faces, and free coffee and donuts.  To me, it's worth it.  There's a feeling of general goodwill in pursuit of community that's all the more heartening for the fact that gardeners are a singularly crusty species of animal.

But so conspicuous was their absence at the last meeting that the president of the board, who's around my age, offered those in attendance tips on how to approach hipsters without scaring them off.  A mimeographed list of musical artists like Serge Gainsbourg, Bauhaus and Goblin was circulated along with a recipe for vegan soy pizza.  We were encouraged to get a neck tattoo, and to wear our hair with bangs, if at all possible. 

Bangs?  Never.  Not even for a laugh.  Sure, we should meet them halfway, but not at the price of our dignity.  Unfortunately, those of us who had tried agreed it seemed like initial attempts to make nice with the hipsters had ended in mutual dread, and now efforts to start over seemed beyond hopeless: every time you passed one, they had their earbuds in and were so utterly absorbed in some new iphone app there was simply no opening for even just a friendly "hi-diddly-do, neighbor!"

Soon, mutual dread turned to animosity, as it does, and now it seemed to all parties as if each had committed some terrible crime against the other.

I tried not to take it personal, myself.  But when I tried to introduce myself to one who has a garden kinda kitty-corner from mine, and he said, "Oh, are you new?  I've never seen you here."  That was off-putting.  I mean, what does my being here have to do with his seeing me being here?  You see what I'm saying?  Do the rest of us just disappear when he's not around?  A simple "hello" would have sufficed.



There's a skinny little hipster twink further down the row who races by seemingly terrified that someone is going to leap out and gobble him up before he makes it, breathless, to his plot, so inflamed by wild desire we all must be by his girlish figure.  I tried greeting him as lustlessly as humanly possible a few times, but his unconcealed certainty that every errant glance in his direction was tantamount to rape got to be tedious.  He was one of these "look at me!  Don't look at me!  Look at me!" types, too. 

It got so that just seeing him scurry by, even out of the corner of my eye and without an unclean thought in my head, made me feel like a level three sex offender.  His hyper self-consciousness sucked up all the atmosphere around him.  It was impossible not to watch him skitter by, like those unexceptional boys in the gym locker room who are so certain they'll be perved they make a great commotion taking off their underwear with their towel still wrapped around their waist.  It's so awkward, self-conscious and comical a spectacle, you can hardly look away.

I wanted to taser him, and then tell him, "Look, I don't want you!  Sure, I'd fuck you, but that doesn't mean I want you!  Get over yourself!"  But that might just make matters worse.

There's yet another hipster across from me.  You could plop him right down in the middle of Davis — that's how hip he is.  They're all completely sexless.  He could be a lesbian for all I know or care.  He grows enough lettuce for about five tossed salads, has so far used about 350 gallons of water for them, and fancies he's saving the planet.  You get the feeling he wants you to thank him for it, too. 

We have had a few short exchanges, but he always strikes me as intensely, stringently humorless.  Is this the new irony?  If it is, I'm tone deaf to it.  Seems to me it's not just that he has a dry sense of humor — it's mummified.  I mean, even if nobody gets your sense of humor, they can generally tell you've got one, of some sort.  He actually doesn't.  Maybe he hit his head.  Could be frontal lobe damage.  A case for Oliver Sacks. The Man Who Mistook Three Wormy Heads of Lettuce for a Victory Garden. 

Oh, snap!

No.  You know I'm not like that.  I don't mean to sound snarky, but sometimes it can't be helped.  It's true, we all do what we can, and he certainly gets an A for effort. Or whatevs.  But, really, how much drama can you stuff into one worm-eaten head of lettuce? 

I mean, last weekend, as I mentioned, there was a rash of break-ins.  When I arrived Sunday the gardens were abuzz.  Several gardens had been broken into, a gate had been kicked in, the rose bush from the Needs had been heisted, my bike had been nicked, and the lilac bush it had been chained to mangled, and all I heard half-way down the row was Lettuce Head here shrieking about how someone had hacked down an ever-spreading stand of spiderwort along his fence, and tossed them in a pile in front off his gate. 

Which was clearly not meant to be a subtle gesture.  It was code for: WEED ALONG YOUR FENCE, DOUCHEBAG!  Obviously, some old queen with a weed-wacker was sick of this young prick's weeds blocking the garden path, and had gone vigilante.  It happens.  It's understandable.  But here was Lettuce Head going on and on about it as if it were a mystery worthy of Poirot.  "Why would someone do this to me?"  He should have been thanking whoever it was for weeding for him*.

I so wholeheartedly supported the weed-wacker-wielding mystery gardener that I felt to decode the secret message for Lettuce Head would risk exposing my sympathies to the point where I might actually be blamed for the culprit myself.  And reminding him that it is indeed every gardeners responsibility to clear the weeds from along his fence so that the paths, already narrow, remain passable, would only make matters worse. 

And, anyway, why should I have to remind him?  It's a common and common-sense courtesy to keep the path in front of your garden from getting overgrown. All this caterwauling was just an excuse to put off some much-needed weeding.  Maybe in the hopes that the mystery wacker would take matters into his own hands again, and finish the job.

I thought Lettuce Head would probably get the message eventually, but yesterday evening as I prepared to leave my garden he was just arriving.  He had yet to remove the pile of spiderwort that had been tossed in front of his gate during the weekend, and started whining about it again, at full-throttle.  I got the feeling he knew what it all meant — he had had all weekend to work it out — but wanted the person responsible to step up.  Otherwise to queen out about it — they're weeds, for chrissakes, they'll grow back! — seemed a bit OTT even for the queens of the Fens.

This may require extreme measures.  Does anyone know where I can get a hipster-wacker?   
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*Spiderwort is not technically a weed (although the variety growing wild in the Fens is mighty weedy-looking), and while it's not on the garden society's invasive list it does tend to spread like crazy when unchecked.  The bigger issue here is actually gardeners doing their part to maintain the common space along their fences to keep pathways accessible.  Clearing away the weeds also makes it easier to scoop up the poop our crackhead friends leave along the paths for us.