Marcella Durand
 
 

Oasis: A Median
 
 

On my block, 4th Street between Avenues C and D, are three community gardens. The first is a flat, stony sort of space called "Orchard Alley." The second is a lovely pocket-sized space, with 2 winding lanes leading to a barbecue area shaded by large trees and buildings. The third runs thru to 5th Street and consists of four parts: a large and wild park-like space with tall poplar trees, long grasses, a willow tree, amaranth and sunflowers; a small and under-construction children’s garden (for the kids from the school next door); a casita and recreation-space; and finally, the garden to which I belong, a vegetable-and-flower garden with variously sized wooden plots.

Most of the community gardens in the East Village and Alphabet City have become sleeker and more landscaped, along with the community taking care of them--that is, the community gardens not to be sold by the city for development. The 6B garden is the flagship, with concerts and readings in the summer, a multi-story sculpture, artwork mixed in with the exotic trees and flowers, and a beautiful and impenetrable fence with little metal cut-outs of children’s hands for decoration. The 9C garden is like a country estate, with corn, tomatoes, grapes, astrological circles and an enormous willow tree. This bit of farmland is slotted to be partially bulldozed soon for housing development. The small 6BC garden is a landscaped job, cited in garden and architecture magazines, with cacti growing by brick walls, a grape arbor walk, fish ponds, and even a small waterfall.

My garden is weedy.  There are only 12 members. And when the Parks Department bulldozed a vacant lot next to the community garden, the chickens kept there under junked cars and trucks were moved over to our garden. They are skinny and hungry. My salad greens were pecked down to stubs in the fall. Their clawprints appear everywhere--even on ice in the winter. Once an entire phone booth appeared in the back of the garden and disappeared the next day. There’s an old car seat, and a neglected plastic jungle gym.  There are a bunch of stray cats. There’s a bathtub buried in a path. Only the white rim is visible.

There is one guy named "Money" who defecates in people’s plots if he doesn’t like them, or so I heard from the woman who gave me the key to the garden. They obviously hate each other. She bitched about him, and then, when I met him, he bitched about her. He seemed nice and talked a lot, but I couldn’t understand much, because he talked so fast and in a heavy accent. I haven’t found any shit yet, but someone pinches off the pepper plant buds before they become peppers. I don’t say "my" pepper plants because they were in the plot when I got it. The entire garden has hundreds of pepper plants growing in it, scattered randomly. There is also some kind of purple plant that seems to grow more than it should. Purslane is also a problem. I find footsteps thru my plot, even after I put up wire.

The two people I see most are two Puerto Rican guys, one old and one young. The young one has two plots next to me. One plot is completely fenced off with chopped-up shopping cart grates and had lettuce inside. I came in one day to find the lettuce gone and a rooster inside. The young guy explained to me in very broken English that the rooster stayed there during the day, then slept in his apartment at night. He said the rooster had had an eye infection, but once he gave it a little penicillin, it was OK. He picked up the rooster and held it affectionately while it looked at me with fierce eyes. The young guy grows melons in his other plot. Or he tries. At the end of the season, he showed me a very small watermelon nested inside a cut-off water jug.

In the fall, I was startled by finding a man asleep in the garden shed. I left the pitchfork where it was. Later on, I would see him come out, dressed for work. But he keeps his head down and doesn’t speak. Most of the other gardeners seem to come over only in the summer. These include a Russian guy and his mother, who maintains a well-manicured plot with tomatoes and other vegetables. But someone has dumped containers of chinese food in it this winter--perhaps mistaking it for compost. Another woman is older and grows parsley, lettuce and spinach. She doesn’t like the chickens so much and complains. The entire back part of the garden is fenced off with old bits of cast iron fences and is the apparent domain of a mysterious fellow who "has been here forever." This is the most landscaped area, with small cedar trees, japanese maples and shrubs.

Next door is an illegally fenced-off squat. The squat runs thru the entire block in between the large park and the school in a sort of L-shape. It borders the garden on the back and on the side. Inside the fencing is a casita. There are many casitas built in vacant lots around here, but this one is the prettiest. It is bright red and has coffee cups hanging inside. There is a lovely flower garden in front, and in the summer big parties with music. Behind the casita is a chicken coop, ducks and geese. The ducks and geese run up to the edge of the fence and quack for food. There is also some kind of animal skin hung on a shack. On the other side is a recreation area, with weightlifting equipment, tables and chairs, a television, lights and a generator.

Once, when I peeked through, I could see all the men playing dominoes. In the summer, on the corner of 4th Street and Avenue C, there is also a group of men who set up a card table in front of the deli and play dominoes. An old woman who lives in a storefront next to the deli comes out with her bird and sits next to the men. She doesn’t speak to them or look at them, but sits there and watches the passing people while her bird squawks. Above her, on the fire escapes, are more birds in cages, including one that has a very pretty song. There is also a guy who sells bikes. He ties them to the fire hydrant and puts a sign on them. There are small plywood stands in the vacant lots that sell lots of stuff: books, clothes, tools. There is also a woman who sets up a little table and gas range in front of the park and cooks chicken. People pull up milk crates and sit and eat.

There is a trendy expensive bar a few blocks away that has a free barbecue in the summer in its backyard. Through the fence, if you peek, you can see chickens, ducks and even turkeys. Above there is a cage built out of a window on a fire escape. Inside the cage there are big plump pigeons. Traffic along Avenue C is much slower than on Avenue B.  There is a church further down 5th Street with a beautiful back wall built of glass fragments pressed into concrete. They are in the forms of faces, including Christ with a halo of broken mirror shards, reflecting the East River light. It is a neighborhood of birds.
 
 
 

(c)1999 Marcella Durand
All rights reserved.
 
 

Marcella Durand's next chapbook, "City of Ports," is forthcoming this spring from Situations Press. She is the co-editor of "Venice (the invisible city)" and the Program Coordinator for the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City.