There's something about a man with a really big deck

[Editor's note: Yay! I can upload pictures to Blogger again! This website's got more kinks than a strip club in a town full of Southern Baptists.]

I've got a really big deck, if I do say so. While it's not San Fernando Valley estate-of-a-porn-star huge, it's definitely above average--or so *blush* I'm constantly told. I'm not just bragging--it's the honest-to-Jeff Stryker truth. [Editor's note: Perhaps not a good link for sensitive readers--but then, you are reading *this*.] Why, my deck is long enough, wide enough, and strong enough for any man . . . to do a little container gardening in his spare time.

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Sure signs of my aging and the impending apocalypse (because I will take everyone down with me when I turn 45 this year): I spend my time quizzing my female friends, such as NoRella, Sophia Loren, and the Artist Formerly Known as Jean Naté, about which is the better firming lotion to use. And any time left over, I spend gardening.

Some people strive their whole lives for riches, only to discover that they can indeed take it with them. (See you in hell, Ken Lay!) Some pass the time in search of the big 'o,' the mother of all orgasms--or at least the oft-repeated one. Some yearn for peace and social justice (although perhaps they're taking a break from this concept in the face of the nascent World War III Pursuit: Middle Eastern Edition currently playing out at a refugee camp not near you.) And still some focus on achieving the perfect tan. (This is Pennsylvania after all, where apparently no one ever met a leathery hide that didn't look better in bermudas or a sun dress. Or so they think.)

But me, well, I've given up the stamp collection, the Sims, and repeats of Kath & Kim on Sundance for . . . gardening.

Lordy. It's come to this, has it?

This is a first for me, so please be gentle. I've never had a great deal of success with gardening, whatever the reason. Over the years I've exhibited a lack of rapport with rhododendrons, a disappointment with dahlias, and a torpor when it comes to tulips. But I suspect, more than anything, I've lacked space, time, and interest in the small and simple joys of growing your own fruit, flower, and veg.

Oh, I can certainly charge top dollar for flowers in a florist shop and am something of a minor-league playa in selecting the most obscure vegetable in the produce market and figuring out how to put it to good use in a recipe. (May I recommend the parsnip? Boiled with a little butter and freshly ground nutmeg, it can be almost sublime.) But having a green enough thumb to grow my own? Feh. When it comes to home horticulture, I'm usually all thumbs and no green. A homo alone, as it were.

What I've also lacked is a yard, and this is something of a prerequisite for full-scale, full-tilt gardening. Despite the best efforts of well-meaning friends (one can be generous and assume) to drag me by the scruff of my bank account into their own special kind of suburban hell, the ugly truth is that at my ripe old age, I'm still not a homeowner. Instead, I remain merely a flat-dwelling, convention-flouting, religion-questioning, booty-shaking, equal rights-awaiting, card-carrying friend of Dorothy, brother of Oscar, son of an urning.

I'm a bit out of step with the times and my age group, to say the least. A case in point: While some people my age are hitting the highway in their Chevy Suburbans, replete with hubristic bumperstickers like "My child is more of an a**hole than yours," I mull over the transportation and style merits of owning a "harvest moon" beige Volkswagen New Beetle (with the turbo diesel option, just to be practical) in a cold climate. And still while others pass their days spackling off in their their bathrooms and getting hammered and nailed by their contractors in their designer kitchens, I spend my hours trying to determine which colors complement an orange sofa; figuring out a payment plan for buying a 32-inch, wall-mounted, HDTV; and waxing eloquent over my superb, new apartment, the nicest, roomiest place I've lived since leaving home.

Just forget about spending your money on that new Blue Nile or Dannii Minogue record, they say--buy some caulk instead! Forgo that long-desired holiday in South Africa or the emigration to a better way in Toronto--you should be weighing the plusses and minuses of adjustable- vs. fixed-rate mortgages! Avert your eyes from that lovely stainless steel French press from Weaver's that your mother, Vivien Leigh, just graciously gifted you with--instead, give up the notion of helping the people of New Orleans by ordering your beans online from Community Coffee and ask your parents to help you with the downpayment on some Central Pennsylvania fixer-upper, replete with autumn gold and avocado green shag carpeting (which would match the orange sofa, I'll give you that) and chocolate brown laminate kitchen cabinets! In a few decades, when you finally give up and give in, declaring bankruptcy from the upkeep and the heating bills, you'll thank us!

Honestly, even without having been called out on my own brand of social terrorism from time to time, it's a wonder I haven't already headbutted a few people in the chest over this sort of thing.

I guess because homeowners can't naturally reproduce, they have to recruit new members into the cult--sorry, I mean, club, no wait, lifestyle. Thus lots of proselytizing, lots of incentives to make this alternative way of living more attractive. Now mind you, I'm not homeownershiphobic. In fact, some of my best friends are homeowners. But, I'm sorry, being a homeowner, well, it's a lifestyle choice, isn't it? (Heavens, you couldn't be born that way, could you?) And with me, well, you're barking up the wrong forest, I'm afraid. I just can't envision myself adopting the homeowner lifestyle anytime soon. Maybe ever. After all, I've got my reputation to consider.

Why the above would be compelling arguments to buy a house to any person, gay or otherwise, is the hits and beyond of my comprehension. What's that children's story . . . or maybe it was a Bible story? . . . about the mouse . . . or some rodent . . . that played while his country cousin . . . or suburban sister . . . stored grain . . . or nuts or whatever . . . for the winter, and then the playboy chipmunk died a cold and miserable death during a global warming-induced flood--or a snowstorm? Yeah, that one, that's me, the secret city squirrel--except I continue to live and thrive, and I get to do whatever I want, whenever the mood strikes me.

Ha! The Singleton's revenge may offer no equity and other financial concepts I don't quite fathom, but it is indeed sweet.

All this is to say (bet you never thought I'd get there) that I still don't have a yard to call my own. This isn't something I'm particularly sad over, mind you, having cut grass to a sufficient degree of satiation as a child. Normally, however, a yard facilitates one's efforts to garden.

But as mentioned previously, I do have a very big deck. And it's a beauty alright. Thus, after a year of settling in to my new apartment, this past spring I began my very own pot garden.

Oops, pot garden. Commonwealth term, innit? That's what my coworker and #1 plant supplier Madame Kiwi calls my experimentation in household hoein'. Better known as container gardening in the States, no matter what you call it, it's simply the act of buying containers at Target, Williams-Sonoma or Ashcombe Farm, dumping in some over-processed and over-fertilized potting soil (what I like to call Miracle Glo, 'cause the phosphorescense it gives off at night is so Three Mile Island-esque), sticking in some seeds or bought or borrowed plants, and voilà--c'est la dolce vita, el gran jitomate, die grosse Kartoffel!

It all started out innocently enough. I bought a book on container gardening in the early spring, then immediately lost it in a pile of newspapers and L.L. Bean catalogs on my coffee table. By the time I found it again, I was too daunted by the elaborate plans, soil zones, and color schemes for these designer container gardens to do it myself. I mean, I just wanted some herbs and a few tomatoes, not the Harrisburg Metropolitan Statistical Area equivalent of Sissinghurst. (Just call me Vita "Potato Sack"-ville West, cultural-critic-in-residence at Sissyhurst. Cheers, thanks a lot.) I wanted something simple, and I wanted something that would have practical returns--for example, something nice to look at and something tasty for my table.

But I work with a generous bunch. When they're not bringing in the fruit and veg of their labors, they're bringing in leftovers from their labors--extra daylilies, pepper plants, tomato plants, annuals, perennials, mutuals, perpetuals (I'm still working out the terminology), and the like.

Plus Central Pennsylvania is something of a gardening gangsta's paradise. There are five months of cold, seven months of warm, and twelve months of humidity. There are nurseries galore, and nearly everyone you meet is in a muddle over mulch, a conundrum over compost, a funk over fertilizer. How can you mess up a garden with all this cosmic, eco-friendly energy pressing you on?

So far, I haven't. A couple of free daylilies and two pepper plants have turned into a bit of an urban oasis in my little town--at least my version of an oasis, which is limited in scope and scale and doesn't involve rocket-launchers, disputed territory, or the latest fashions among the kibbutz-and-purdah crowd. I now have a nearly rubber-baby-buggy-bumper's crop of herbs (flat-leaf parsley, lemon basil, lavender, rosemary, and dill), vegetables (squash, bell peppers, tomatoes), and flowering plants (delphinium, sunflowers, daylilies).

I've made my mistakes, botching one crop of dill while trying to transplant it into another container and torturing to death some flat-leaf parsley with too much exposure to alternately Death Valley Days and Lower Ninth Ward-like conditions.

Although both are doing fine, I started my beefsteak tomatoes too late I'm told, but I'm hopeful at least to have some fried green tomatoes for supper by fall. And currently my sunflower crop lacks a certain oomph, only being about a foot-and-a-half in height. Come November though, the frost-bitten stems should make for a lovely holiday wreath, no?

Nevertheless, in spite of my floral flops and vegetative vexes, I have managed to use my own dill and basil for home cookin', having parlayed the tragically transplanted former into a rather tasty avgolemono soup and absconded with some of the lemon basil for a summery, not-too-shabby tomato-and-mozzarella salad. I now even have some peppers soon to be ready for harvest. And the yellow and orange daylilies and purple and blue delphinium have provided some much-needed color on an otherwise boring--but big!--deck.

Oh, I'm still lacking a few things to be a proper gardener. More gardening knowledge for one. A better sense of garden design for two. But I'm referring to my lack of more important gardening essentials--specifically, accessories. For example, so far, I've failed to secure the proper patio furniture to enjoy the garden to the fullest--namely a chaise longue, a misting tent, a garden gnome like the one from Amelie, and a seven-month's supply of mefloquine to fight against the malarial conditions found throughout the Susquehanna Valley.

To remedy this gardening crisis, however, donations are being accepted. Folks, feel free to make your checks payable to "Container Garden Aid."

Still, I swear I never thought this would happen to me. Gardening. Jeez. How long before I start extoling the merits of vermicomposting, weighing whether to terracotta or not to terracotta my pots, and scouring the shelves of my local gardening shop for pesticide-free, well, pesticides?

Heed my words: The apocalypse is indeed nigh upon us.

Next thing you know, I'll be forgoing the small pleasures of my life--a subscription to the daily New York Times, new expansion packs for the Sims 2, and a revolving credit line at Amazon.de and Amazon.fr for all the schlager pop tunes and French rap albums a guy could want--to buy, egad, something resembling a house.

Y'all, if I get to that point--or buy a truck 'cause it's good for haulin'; start weighing my homeowner's insurance options in a public forum; join the Log Cabin Republicans; or begin to dress up any future dog I might own like a big ol' bumblebee 'cause I think it's cute--you have permission to headbutt me in the chest or anywhere else vulnerable.

Just keep your hands off my tomatoes.