My friend Michael is always looking out for me.

We met today for lunch with another friend from the garden society and among other schemes and plans being hatched was one that involved a move on my part. 

Friends of the Blog will recall the ups and downs over the years of the miracle magnolia in the garden one gate down from mine, which is the spring beacon of the Boylston section of the Fenway Victory Gardens... 


As Friends of the Blog may also recall, most of the year last year the garden was derelict, but not vacant — it became someone's summer home (well into autumn, actually).  I repaired and rebuilt the gate at least four times, until the angry squatter finally smashed it to smithereens. 

Michael and I have strolled through the gardens several times, surveying the scene over the course of the winter, and well into December the plot was still being used as a public toilet. 

Well, at lunch today Michael said he was worried about the magnolia and suggested I apply for the plot this Spring.  I can't say the thought hadn't already occurred to me, but I have been trying to get another friend, who has a garden around the corner, to take it.  Unfortunately he has a better view of the pageant of summer beefcake up and down the main path from where he is now, and doesn't want to give it up.  And can you blame him?

It would be a good fit for me, actually.  I mulled it over at lunch.

As we strolled back through the gardens afterward he elaborated.  What he had in mind was not a land-grab but a swap.  His plan called for me to give up my garden and start from scratch next door. 

I dunno.

We stopped and surveyed both gardens.  The one littered with human waste, robbed of any plant matter of any value, even the hardscaping gone, a pit in the back corner where the gardener who used to be there had dug out a small tree to take with him to JP with God knows what in it now.  The other, a fussily laid-out series of spirals, beds lovingly tended, with a prize-winning tree peony in the back corner and a stock of perennials gathered over the space of five years.

"I'm kind of attached to my garden," I mumbled.

"You have a week to think about it!" he barked, and marched off.

He can be like that.

I'll probably request the plot without giving up the one I've got.  I mean, honestly, mine isn't as special — aside from a couple of lilac bushes and an evergreen, it didn't come with any special features, but I've invested a lot in my vision, as modest as the results may be, of that particular spot, and frankly, the idea of digging everything up and moving it all fifteen feet to the Southwest doesn't thrill me. 

Thank goodness I have a week to think about it.