If anyone has ever spent a bunch of time working and tilling and planting and nurturing a garden, only to have to leave it behind, well then, I'm pretty sure you feel me and where I'm at starting a new garden from scratch. We have officially moved out of the Goth St House and into a place that more closely resembles an actual dwelling instead of a place where hippies and punks go to party and then die. Couldn't get out of there quickly enough; the laundry list of problems with the foreclosed property was getting out of hand.
In the two years I lived there, the problems we encountered in the Goth St House included (but were not limited to): mice, ants, flies, maggots, flooding, mold, more flooding, rats the size of possums, a literal shit flood ("Shit River Disaster of 2010"), pigeons, that insufferable retarded dog-goat who liked to pee on everything, fried fuses, incomplete plumbing, broken locks and, actually, that might be about it. Except the constant flow of hippie hipster punk kids. We had a lot of those too.
Amidst all of the chaos and tattoos and cheap beer, I planted a little vegetable patch in the backyard. It quickly became my life. Partly because I needed a new creative outlet and partly because I'm boring and often prefer to deal with the easily recognizable needs of things I can grow. My little patch of pitted carrots and scraggly collards became, over time, my pride and joy - a place for me to go and focus and get my hands dirty. After a year and a half I was growing artichokes, brussell sprouts, garlic, chard, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and anything else I could get my hands on and stick in the ground.
So it didn't come as a surprise to me, when I had mixed feelings about leaving behind my secret garden. On the one hand, it was hard to leave the plants behind - many of them were in mid growing season. My artichokes had grown to 5ft x 5ft beauties and with their massive taproots, certainly couldn't be transplanted. On the other hand, there is always something really exciting about a clean slate, be it a new garden, a new home, a new love interest or a new project. Change is always good.
And with that, I wrote this poem, in the much-celebrated style of Goodnight Moon:
