What’s a garden without welcome (or not) advice?
Marilyn and Pat Fitzmaurice have a coronavirus victory garden that is the envy of their Northwest Side neighborhood.
And a strange person they call The Garden Pethera came over to see it.
Marilyn’s vegetable garden is neat and well planted with tomatoes and cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, beans, radishes and so on. It’s tight and perfectly fenced, with the posts dug in deep. The ground is covered by landscape fabric to keep the weeds down and bounce that loving sun onto the underside of the leaves.
Pat did the digging. He wanted to say something, but The Garden Pethera asked him to let Marilyn do the talking.
“I started gardening with my mother when I was about 5,” Marilyn said. “And I wanted to have a vegetable garden, like we did years ago. But we have dogs. I wanted a fence, but we never did get one in until now. There’s this strange guy, a columnist I read, who loves gardening. He really loved gardening, and he had a dog and a big fenced vegetable garden with landscape fabric pegged tight. I wanted one.”
You mean that obsessive weirdo who’d sweep his garden to get dirt off the landscape fabric?
“Yes,” she said.
And who is this strange person? “The Garden Pethera. You,” said Pat, leaning up on his new fence. “You’re The Garden Pethera. I Googled ‘mother-in-law’ in English to Greek, and it came up ‘Pethera.’ You’re The Garden Pethera, aren’t you?” True.
I am The Garden Pethera. But I am not his mother-in-law. His real mother in law, “Ma D,” was an epic gardener.
But I am his Garden Pethera, because, when he was building the garden for his wife, he’d call or text me for advice. We’re friends. I’ve been called many things, but never a Pethera. But I did tell Pat I started feeling something like the mother-inlaw of the garden, because I “involved” myself.
Many of you know I don’t have a garden now. I love when readers post their coronavirus victory garden photos on my Facebook pages. When Pat told me he was building a garden for Marilyn, perhaps I got a bit too excited.
“John don’t tell Pat and Marilyn what to do with their garden,” Betty would say. “Step back. You don’t have a garden. Don’t tell them what to do.”
I never tell people what to do. I just offer advice, on rare occasions, when asked.
So I advised him, sometimes twice a day, or more, on cutting out the grass with a spade, rototilling the hell out of the soil, how much mushroom compost to put down, how best to peg the landscape fabric, how to put the cucumbers near one side of the fence, and so on and so on.
I did ask him to send photos, so I could be sure he was doing it right.
“If I told Ma D (his real mother-inlaw) that I was going to dig this garden, and if I told her I’d do it on a Sunday and if it wasn’t done, she’d have been out here at 6 in the morning, on Monday, digging,” said Pat. “I had the pressure of memories on me.”
It was backbreaking work and Pat did it all by hand. He works for the city and is in good shape for an almost geezer. He loves boxing more than gardening, and has a gym his garage and punching bags, and knows how to throw a double left hook. I think Pat believes the perfect evening is to work out, eat a mess of clams, and sit down with Marilyn to watch old Marvelous Marvin Hagler boxing tapes. “Not me,” Marilyn said. When he started digging in the sun, she found him a floppy hat he could put in the freezer and then on his head. The fence is outstanding. The dirt is loamy. The landscape fabric fits like a custom-made suit. The plants are healthy.
And now they’re adding a finer, mesh rabbit fence on the bottom, because one of the evil beasts got in and chomped her peas to death.
“I have a pellet gun and I was going to whack them out,” said Pat. “She said ‘No way! No way!’ If she finds one dead rabbit it’s going to have company: me.”
Garden Pethera suggested scattering human hair around the borders. I remember somebody telling me to make punji sticks. It’s creepy, yes, but human hair and cayenne powder might work. Not everybody has a Zeus the Wonder Dog.
Now, I’m not a mean Pethera. I don’t judge. But like a nice Garden Pethera, I will give my opinion when warranted.
And my opinion is, that as a gardener, Marilyn Fitzmaurice needs no advice from me. Her garden is perfect.
She does all the planting. There is a long perennial bed on one side of her yard with flowers, including purple bee balm and an old trumpet vine with a gnarled trunk she planted years ago. It spits out brilliant orange blossoms, but it also sends its devious shoots everywhere.
Marilyn has all her herbs near the kitchen where they belong, including purslane (for the tomato salads to come) and rosemary, and many pots of basil on the back porch, so you brush against them as you enter the house.
That’s a gardener.
They told me come for another visit. What they don’t know I’ll probably sneak over tomorrow, just to make sure everything’s OK.
The Garden Pethera without a garden never sleeps.
Listen to “The Chicago Way” podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at www.wgnradio.com/category/wgnplus/thechicagoway.