Confessions of a house tour Tom Sawyer

It is my long-held, cherished belief that incompetence is not without its rewards. If it’s widely known that you’re incapable of doing something, good people will come to your aid. As long as you don’t let pride — among the seven deadly sins, kids — get in your way, you will often be offered a helping hand.

And that is how I got on the neighborhood garden tour.

I live in Pittsburgh’s smallest neighborhood, Allegheny West. It’s just two North Side blocks wide and five streets deep. It really ought to be called “Over by the Community College,” but that’s a bit cumbersome for tour brochures, and tours are what my neighborhood never stops giving.

We have a big house tour just before Christmas and a wine-and-garden tour in the spring. These raise money for various things, not least the neighborhood block parties we throw ourselves on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. Penn Pilsner doesn’t grow on trees.

Anyway, if you live in one of our rowhouses, you’re more or less expected to help out now and again. Thus came a phone call early this year from a tour organizer. It went something like this:

Kind neighbor: “Brian, we’re planning a French theme for the wine-and-garden tour, serving only French wines, and calling it ‘The Paris of Appalachia.’ ” Would that be OK with you?”

(For those confused by this question, I wrote a book about Pittsburgh by that title in 2009. I’d heard the phrase as a putdown, “Paris of Appalachia” being said with the sort of sneer one might use for “Sexiest Guy on ‘The Lawrence Welk Show.’ ” But I love this city and I wrote the book in part to turn that negative perception around.)

Me: “OK with me? Are you kidding? I’d be flattered.”

Kind neighbor: “Would you be willing to sell books?”

Me: “Uh, how can I put this . . . YEAH!”

Kind neighbor: “Would you be willing to be on the tour?” Uh-oh. I take a laissez-faire approach to my side yard. It has a brick and stone surface surrounded by plants I mostly can’t identify, and when I put up the hammock in late May I figure I’m about done until October. I mean, what have dandelions ever done to me?”

Me: “I’d be no good for your tour. I know nothing about gardening.’’

Kind neighbor: “Oh, we’ll help you weed and we’ll buy the flowers.”

Saying no to that would have dumb as Tom Sawyer trying to stop those Missouri kids from whitewashing his fence.

Not long after, I came home from work through my side gate to find more than dozen large bags filled with yard debris. A neighbor, her teenage son and who knows how many others had broken, entered and weeded. I became the first old man in recorded history to shout, “Hey, you kids, get on my property!”

Another woman filled my window boxes with flowers and brought hanging ferns as lush as the hair of Sideshow Bob on “The Simpsons.” I was given, well, not exactly lectures, but talks that might have been titled “Mulching Is So Fun!” (The mulch demands of my yard proved to be roughly akin to the blood demands of that extraterrestrial plant in “Little Shop of Horrors.”)

With all that plus potted flowers on loan to fool the tourists, the tour went swimmingly. I was situated in a place where visitors had been plied with enough French wine to buy any book with “Paris” in the title.

But have you ever gotten a really good haircut and then, a couple of months later, tried to keep the look by cutting your locks with a pair of cheap scissors? Welcome to my yard.

The other night, a note was slipped through my mail slot: “Brian, I promised ___ and ___ I would remind you to water plants. They need watering — particularly plants on stoop.’’

D’oh! Where’s a rainstorm when you need one?

I’m not complaining, mind you. My neighbors put so much work in, they naturally feel a sense of ownership. The other morning, I was hosing those hanging ferns and a car filled with four women paused to watch, looking at me the way they would a child taking his first steps. Or a chimp riding a tricycle.

If I’d have known how much weeding and watering a decent garden took, I’d have forgotten Tom Sawyer and rafted downriver like Huck Finn.