[Community_garden] A Cautionary Note About Urban Greenhouses and Teenaged Males

[adam36055 at aol.com]

 Greenhouses are wonderful and all so helpful to gardeners, that I wish we could all have them in our gardens to save plant costs.
 
And.....
 
The joy of walking all bundled up, crunching snow beneath your boots as you shovel the snow from your garden paths, knowing that you will be shortly viewing flats of started plants, a few late amaryllis in bloom and that amazing smell of humus and renascent life in the dead of February has few equals. 
 
Back in the day,  in Adam Purple's garden on the Lower East Side, we had  the joy of this experience for about two weeks. 
 
For me, all was right with the world, working shifts as a busboy went quicker because I knew that the next morning, or early evening I'd be breathing the rarefied air of a greenhouse - who was better than me? F'ing Lord Stokesbury had a greenhouse in Kent, so did we!
 
But then, one Sunday morning I came by the garden and saw that all of the greenhouse's glass had been smashed, the small trestle tables had been broken and most of the flats stolen or trashed. 
 
It was Sunday morning and I saw a teenaged boy with his family carrying one of our Amaryllis's off to church, in the pot that Adam Purple had thrown and decorated, so it was unmistakable. And I ran across the street, garden fork in hand yelling, "$@!!!%^^&&&&-er you broke our greenhouse and have the balls to take an Amaryllis that you stole from us to church?!!!" 
 
Caught red handed, he hems and haws, his mother looks at him, his brothers and sisters look at him, and he hands me the Amaryllis. 
 
Once I had calmed down, his mother had slapped him a few times and said choice Hispanic phrases, slapped him again, crossed herself for saying such bad things on a Sunday and apologized,  and I realized that I didn't want to go to Riker's Island, eat balogna sandwiches on white with butter and be shower-sodomized for beating this miscreant to a bloody pulp, I took a deep, deep breath and asked...
 
"Why did you climb over the fence with your friends break open an unlocked greenhouse, break every piece of glass, trash the plants and steal what was left? You saw us building this thing - we're poor people like you, you come into the garden all the time to smoke with your girlfriend?  Why did you guys do this?"
 
I'm still holding the garden fork like the evil Hebraic devil he has to see me as and says, because he knows that a lie might cost him his life, I'm so infuriated..."Man, it was so much fun! You don' like to break glass?" 
 
I let them pass, shook my head, started to clean glass, and when Adam Purple came by the garden and saw the distruction, he was pissed too. 
 
The $@!!!%^^&&&&-ing teenaged males, in the ravaging stupidity of their kind ( and my kind) thought it was fun to take something really beautiful and life enhancing and break it just because they could - the 
destructive turn of the wheel, the violence that made the Goths burn Rome when they could have given up their tents and moved in after they had whacked the hated Romans. 
 
If you decide to have a greenhouse - that expensive, precious, beautiful  harbinger of spring, PLEASE, have a stout fence, barbed wire, Doberman Pinscers with steel re-enforced teeth and eyes it, or have it known that a particularly miserable narcotics trafficker is fond of it. 
 
Or you will have your heart broken, like mine, like Adam Purple's and all the people with crap jobs who chipped in their money, time and effort to build the greenhouse,  and lost it, all too soon.
 
Best wishes for a not-too-filling Thanksgiving, and great, great  joy. 
They may break our greenhouses, bulldoze our gardens but can't dampen our spirits or will to rebuild, unless we let them....
 
Warmest regards, 
 
Adam Honigman, 
Husband of the late,  Allegra Benveniste Honigman, RN
Proud father of Daniel Honigman, Mike Royko Fellow in Journalism, Northwestern University (Medill)
Member Manhattan Community Board 4 (Committees, Land Use, Waterfront and Parks) 
Vice President DeWitt Clinton Park Conservancy
Volunteer Clinton Community Garden & Liz Christy Gardens
Member of the McManus Regular, Chelsea Reform & Lexington Democratic Clubs
80 hour a week Working Stiff
 
  
 
Hell's Kitchen NYC 
 
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Masboy178 at aol.com
To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org
Sent: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Community_garden Winter greenhouse heating


The most economical way(I feel) would be solar power.  The initial  equipment 
and setup would be the cost issue however, you  will recoupment in record 
time.  Surplus power could be used in your  home or  possibly sold to the local 
utility company.
 
I am trying to obtain the same for our community garden.
I hope this suggestion helps.
 
 
Helen Mason
Fantasy Garden
Brownsville, Brooklyn
New York 11212
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