Ha! I bet you thought I was going to weigh in on that whole Henry Louis Gates Jr. mess.  I'm tempted.  But for now, all I'll say is, Gates needs a drag name, because it sounds like he totally queened out with this "You don't know who you're messing with!" line.  If he'd had a diamond-encrusted cellphone you can bet he'd have thrown it at someone. 

Was race a factor?  Tedious as it is, isn't it always?  But let's not leave out class, status, that ivy league snob-versus-mob-, and that old town-versus-gown-mentality, and clashing egos, too. When all that's factored in, it was just an ordinary day in Cambridge, really.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Move along.

No, the subject of this post is a humble garden gate.  My neighbor's in the Fens. 

You may recall how a couple of weeks ago there was a rash of garden break-ins.  My neighbor's gate was damaged.  Because he has rarely been there this summer (he recently bought a house with a little yard in JP and is only back at the old garden to dig up perennials to transplant to the new one), I repaired it for him.  I knew that leaving it as it was would only invite more nocturnal visitors, and soon the garden would be totally trashed.

This is the community garden version of the James Q. Wilson and George Kelling "broken windows" thesis of of urban decline: "Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps light fires inside or become squatters."   

And don't forget taking a crap.  That's why they're squatting, after all.  Can't poop standing up, you know.

So I fixed it, and then I nailed the mother shut, since the lock had been broken.  I figured this would keep the element out and my neighbor could jimmy it open and replace the lock whenever he showed up to survey the damage.  Next day, come to find someone's torn off four slats (one or two had been damaged in the first break-in), and tossed them into the path in a "take that!" gesture.
 
This is war.

Actually just an ordinary battle in an ongoing war (kind of like that other Gates case).  See, from dawn to dusk, the gardens belong to the gardeners (who do, after all, rent the plots, albeit for a pittance), but from dusk to dawn, they belong to the Vampires of the Fens.  This latest break-in felt more like a claim of ownership.  I got the feeling it was the same party who'd broken in before leaving us a message that they weren't going to give it up without a fight. 

It's like battling someone in another dimension.  I was talking to a gardener across the way yesterday who said once a couple years ago when his garden kept getting broken into he decided to spend the night there to catch the culprits.  Of course, he didn't end up catching them, but was covered head-to-foot in bug bites by midnight.  He managed to drag himself home, luckily, despite having lost a couple quarts of blood to them.

Occupied gardens are still safer from midnight squatters than derelict ones, obviously.  But despite hearing that there are no fewer than a hundred names on our storied waiting list, and assurances that gardens are being filled in a timely and systematic manner, we've got two very visible gardens in our row alone that have been without gardeners all season.  I spoke to the board about them, even offered to weed one, and was rebuffed.  The VP of the garden society explained that the weedier they were they more urgency the gardener who finally gets them will feel in breaking ground and beautifying them.

With August less than two weeks off, let's hope so.

This has been an unsettled season in my little corner of the Fens, that's for sure. 

The other day I was in my secret little spot in the back corner of my plot, which abuts the Special Needs garden, when suddenly one of the Needees, God love 'em, stuck her arm right through the fence and asked if I could make her hose work.  I was like, look, just this once, but this is not gonna turn into some Special Needs glory hole, where you stick your hose through whenever you can't get it to work the way you want it to. 

Next day I come in to find that the morning glory covering my back fence has all been torn away from the other side, leaving my back corner utterly exposed to the Needs.  Luckily I had a spare section of trellis.  It went up immediately, giving me some coverage.  I mean, we all have special needs, right?  Mine's a little spot of my own where I can relax out of sight, out of mind, phone off, no fear of interruption, with a good book and my own little thoughts. 

That's one reason we have fences and gates in the first place.  But they're often more a symbolic or psychological barrier than they are a real, impregnable structural one.  One thing is for sure: the things that separate us are as vital to our sense of safety and self as the things we hold in common. 

So gates aren't a bad thing if we all agree to recognize them for what they are.  But if it's your house or garden you're protecting, be careful not to lock yourself out.  Just in case (memo to that other Gates) you might want to keep a spare key under the mat.