Awkward Bombshell Tries to Neighborhood

I am, objectively, the worst. I mean, I didn't spend my childhood being fat and watching 90s movies full of sassy-mouthed brunettes insulting the hot motorcycle guy before he ultimately falls in love with her to not become a sarcastic anti-social bitch myself. Life in the suburbs is a study in contradictions for me. The houses and properties touch each other! but we build fences between them. I don't know what to do with that. Are we supposed to talk through them, as I sometimes do with my neighbor (ala Wilson and Tim from "Home Improvement")? The one time she poked her head around the corner of my fence and made herself visible while saying hello I screamed like I was in a slasher film because it startled the living crap out of me. Yep. Bad enough the shrieking opera singer that lives next door to you has chickens in the yard, an apocalyptic lawn, and lettuce growing in the roses, but if you try to say hello to her she'll scream in your face--and, you know. Opera singer. Good lungs.

I am so sorry I exploded your head with my big fat voice. For reals, you seriously startled me though.

I don't know how to live in the suburbs. Is it a competition? My street is full of mommies that are better than me in everything. They volunteer as room moms, pull wagons full of Girl Scout cookies, coach soccer, do Pilates and Barre and run and train their dogs like boss bitches. My dog looks at me out of the corner of one rolled eye and mind melds with me so he can mentally flip me off. Are there expectations? Pretty sure there are a minimum set of expectations that, like, the hoarders across the street are definitely not meeting, with the shredded tarp half covering the four hundred year old sedan --but my fence hasn't been painted in, like, ever, even after we had it sand blasted five years ago. In preparation to paint.

Every once in a while I get it into my head to make community, and obviously, as a woman with deep roots in both the Catholic church basement potluck casserole tradition (hot noodles with cottage cheese) and the midwestern "Bring a Dish to Pass" picnic summer salad tradition (cold noodles with mayonnaise) I understood. Community starts with food.

I decided I was going to make special little rice krispie treats for all the kids in the neighborhood my children knew for Halloween. I made the rice krispie treats. They were FREAKING. FANTASTIC. The stuff you get in the packages in the vending machines is not a real rice krispie treat with butter and soft marshmallows. Yes, I realize it's not cooking, but it is iconic American mixing. And it's delicious. All of this to say that after I tasted the first bite that I spooned into my buttered casserole dish I immediately started thinking how much the parents were not going to want their kids to have a non-packaged snack for trick or treating. I flashed back on a TV show episode where the mom painstakingly made home-baked treats for all the kids in the neighborhood and one of the parents rings the doorbell to return them. When the mom confusedly says, "But we've been handing them out all night!" the other woman raises an eyebrow derisively at the lawn, littered with the discarded treats the other parents had immediately pitched. I didn't want my rice krispie treats to get thrown away on my lawn when they were this delicious! I should just eat them myself, right?

What? No. I'm not eating CHILDREN'S HALLOWEEN TREATS.That. Would be wrong.  

I stopped myself. Ok. My children could go deliver the little treats to the houses of their friends early on Halloween night. It could be a little neighborhood thing. The kids would do it, obviously, since it would be weird for an adult to just show up at people's houses with creepy little gifts for their children. Totally different from the same children coming to my house and begging for creepy little gifts. I sent my kids off with the little packages. They all came back to the house--everyone was already out trick or treating. "We should eat them ourselves, mommy. Right?" My youngest was always perfectly in tune with my own dark desires, but I staunchly resisted temptation. I was just going to have to give out. The treats.

When the first kid I knew came to the door I gathered my courage and looked for the parents lingering in the back of the crowd. "I..uh...I have a little treat for...you know...the kids that know my kids...if that's ok...he's in Christopher's class at...uh, at school, and I thought it'd be nice, but if you don't want to let him have..." The dad laughed, reached past his kid and took the treat.

"Of course. Thank you! Nice to see you, Sarah, say hi to Chris."

Oh. You know my name.

Am I trying to create community? Or just finally forcing myself to join it?

I kept trying. A friend of my husband's moved in down the street to a house with a lemon tree. He sent over a big sack of lemons he didn't want. I got inspired to use them all to make a big carafe of homemade lemonade and sent it over to him in a pretty glass container, thinking it would start a back and forth where he sent us all his unused lemons and I made huge vats of lemonade to split them between him and us.

No, he just kept my pretty glass container.

I...don't understand why you didn't anticipate what was in my brain though.

Ugh. I don't even like people. 

Ok. I tried one more time. I made candied apples and sent one over to my neighbor with small children. It was in the worst possible taste and literally made of fruit coated in corn syrup and red dye and it was delicious. 

She accepted it. And sent over an apple pie. 

Wait. 

I think that was it. This may be how that was supposed to go. Ok, I'll try a box of cookies to the next door neighbor whose head I exploded with my "American Horror Story: Garden" screams. She sent back a banana bread covered in delicious toasted walnuts. 

What has happened to me. I know people's names that live on my street and sometimes call them by that when I pass them on the sidewalk, or even more against my nature, I don't quickly look away to avoid making eye contact when I'm backing down the driveway. These are great skills, because now people stop all the time to ask me about my chickens and the garden and find out what we've got growing. I try not to be the worst person and hide behind my fence gate when I see wandering groups of polished professional ladies power walking past my house in their coifs and their Coldwater Creek coordinated ensembles because these glamour pusses are exactly the people I should be selling on the Gospel of Dirt. I mean...I try, but sometimes I pretend to myself that I haven't watered the alpine strawberries that happen to be behind the fence gate, and it usually takes about the same amount of time as the Coifs take to pass my house. 

Today I was backing out of my driveway, on no particular hurry, and a woman came running up to the car, waving her hands to get my attention. Dammit, I thought. Did I run over a cat just now? Dammit! She signaled to me to roll my window down, gesturing wildly. God. Do you want to sell me something? Because I already have all my magazine subscriptions, plus the ones I paid for and never received, and I'm not really down with buying meat off the back of the refrigerated truck. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and rolled down my window.

"I'm sorry," she said cheerfully. "I see you're leaving. Could I take my granddaughter onto your lawn to look at your chickens?" 

A tiny girl with black curls, maybe three years old, popped out from behind her grandmother's legs, bouncing a little as she held onto her grandmother's hand and looked up at me excitedly. 

"Sure," I heard myself say. "Do you want to hold one?" I parked and turned the car off. Delighted, the beaming little girl ran ahead of us to the chicken coop and put both hands up to the chicken wire, peering in at the hens. I kicked off my heels, opened the coop and took out the friendliest and most personable hen, my redhead Maisie. "Would you like to touch her first?" I showed the little miss how to gently stroke the front of Maisie's chest instead of the top of her head, the way she liked it, and then held Maisie's wings at her sides and deposited her into the little girl's lap. She giggled and then her mouth formed a huge round "O" and then she giggled again, still gently stroking Maisie's chest feathers with one tiny finger. 

"Thank you so much for stopping and visiting with us," her grandmother gushed, and held out her hand to me. "It's so, so nice to meet you. I'm Deborah." 

Hi. I'm Sarah. Won't you be my neighbor?

No, I know. I hated how that sounded and I wish I hadn't said it.

The Secret Life of Heels

I caught my neighbor growing squash in her front yard and she did NOT want to talk about it.

I was walking past her house and saw the telltale spade shaped leaves of some young squash plants out in her front yard, hidden in the landscaping, and I was like OH MY GOD A KINDRED SPIRIT! Somebody gets it. Right here on my block, holy crapload of yes. Those squash were like little flags waving to me and saying rest here, ye weary traveler, take refuge from the denizens of crazytown, refresh yourself with some organic lemonade made from our water efficient rainwater saving practices and biodiverse compost for you are safe, girl, kick off your heels.

"Oh my god. You add eggshells to your compost too?" I'm home.

Now, she's a super sporty chick who teaches pilates and cross fit and wears cropped yoga pants and a racer back tank as her daily uniform. Her flip flops are actually FitFlops and her stroller, of course, is a running stroller. If I ever see her running around the neighborhood it's because she's just finished a nine mile cross country run while pushing her two boys in the running stroller and managing the flawlessly trained golden retriever who runs along beside her in perfect tandem in time to wave to me as I'm sleepily heading out to get Starbucks.

What I'm saying is we don't have a lot to talk about.

Still, I was excited that this was going to be a community building moment that would cross the barriers of our different types of footwear, that stilettoed-peep toes and barefoot running shoes could come together in a mutual desire for all the goodness that comes with the garden, to grow and flourish and thrive!

But instead, this was how it went.

Me: "Hey! I see you guys have some squash out in your front yard!" (unspoken subtext: "Like I do, in those huge raised beds I have in the middle of my dead and dying lawn of grass that looks like nuclear winter. Yay squash! Also, be my compatriot in this campaign to spread the gospel of Garden.")

Her: "What? I...well, yes, I mean...my mother-in-law was like, of course you don't ever put food out in the front yard and I didn't want to, but...so my husband grew those from these, like, seeds we got at the grocery store and, I mean, who eats squash?...with the dog and everything we tried to hide them but really we should have some landscaping there." (Unspoken subtext: "Oh. My. GOD I can't believe you called me out on the eyesore in my front yard it has almost been a marriage-ending conflict in my household because LOOK AT IT.") She laughed uncomfortably and race-walked away from me, presumably to burn more free carbohydrates from her impeccably sculpted body.

Okay. We don't talk about it. I get it.

In the same way that when you're dieting it seems like every commercial on TV is for Taco Bell Cinnabons or stuffed crust pizza or glorious glorious jalapeno and lime chips, since I've moved my urban farm into the more sunny and expansive acreage of the front yard, I've noticed little sneaky farm-lets everywhere...and I guess people have noticed mine. An older couple, walking their dog, came up onto the lawn to examine our squash while I was weeding. "Whadya have there, some butternut?" the man asked as if he was from some forgotten Stephen King-esque Connecticut hamlet. His wife, in her immaculately coiffed shining pearl hair and diamond earrings shot him a warning look, but whispered to me, "We have about fifteen raised beds ourselves," before smiling uncomfortably and quickly pulling her husband away by the arm.

I have to admit, when my friend was talking about getting a pet for her children and had ruled out dogs, cats, and reptiles, I was a little embarrassed to suggest what seemed the obvious solution in light of her huge backyard and my own state of mind--chickens. She squirmed at the suggestion, but admitted, "I know, I know, it's so chic right now, chickens are so hot, everyone's doing chickens now."

Are they?

Why is urban farming the dirty little secret of the suburbs?

Shhh, they're growing tomatoes that taste like tomatoes over there.
Right out in the FRONT YARD. Dirty communists.

The whole concept of what suburbanites think of as a traditional front yard comes from our roots as an English colony; basically having a lawn was a symbol of affluence, showing the neighbors you were balling it enough to have land that didn't need to be used for growing food or feeding sheep. Not much has changed in 300 years; the Kardashians have recently become the target for drought shaming for keeping their vast L.A. estate as lush and green as ever despite California's severe water restrictions. We're determined to distance ourselves from our rural roots; not only with those green lawns, but also in the lexicon we use when speaking about farmers and farmland. Boondocks; sticks; mudhole; podunk; yokel; hayseed; hick; bumpkin; dirt farmer. In our very words we show our disdain for the people and soil that sustain us. Our march towards the suburbs is one we're not supposed to look back from. We're here now and our neighbors aren't about to let us forget that (property values, honey)--no, I mean they're seriously not going to let us forget that since there are literally zoning restrictions in some states that prohibit people from farming in the front yard. Thankfully, at least in some places, communities are beginning to relax community gardening regulations to allow the shift from decorative back to functional, from lawns back to vegetables, from landscaping to squash vines.

Which brings me back to the secret life of the backyard farmer, quietly cultivating modern-day victory gardens with tomato cages on the back patio; or my neighbors, with their squash vines on the downlow. See, they may still be closet urban farmers but it definitely takes one to know one; only someone who's tried to grow squash on their own knows how finicky they can be about pollinating, how prone they are to squash borers, how greedy for compost and fertilizer they are once they finally fruit. My little old neighbors know, and that's what made them cross the boundaries of the great suburban divide--the property line--step off the sidewalk into my garden and one step closer to the kind of community our grandparents probably had with each other. It's the kind of community that growing things can build.

At a recent dinner party at my house I was startled when all of the artists and actors and writers I brought over didn't want to have wonderful intellectual conversations with each other. They all asked for a tour of my burgeoning backyard farm. I was a little embarrassed to take them around and say "Well, these are my sunflowers that haven't flowered yet, and this is the bare patch of land where I just planted radishes yesterday, and these are my blueberry bushes that I just harvested so they now look like regular shrubs..." but I was more startled that they bent over and looked at everything and sat in the backyard drinking it in, laughing at how I'd probably have chickens soon but wistfully asking whether I might think of getting a beehive? and just like that, the secret life sparks curiosity.

I'm seeing, really seeing, my neighborhood in a way I never did before, and realizing that those squash vines hidden in the landscaping and tomato plants edging the pathways really are a sign--here's someone who's not afraid, who doesn't care what the neighborhood thinks, who wants to take back a corner of the precious resources we've been given, and who's willing to be weird to do it. Possibly a crazy chicken lady at heart. Possibly a kindred spirit who knows the secret life of farming in heels.