The Planned Garden

Laughing at Rats

We are in a time of cartoon villains, I text my friend. She has just come back from Colombia to Seattle, in time to get caught out in a boat, next to a shootout at a food festival.

All these people have serious unresolved issues and they come and puke on the world, another friend texts me. I don’t know what she’s referring to at first. A local hate group or another shooting.

But then again the Venn diagram of these people looks more like a bullseye, and it’s brown people and women caught in the crosshairs.

Jake Lang is an election denier, white supremacist, and extremist who backs Trump and cheers on ICE as they rip families apart and kill people in our streets. His beliefs are hateful and dangerous - and totally against what we stand for in Massachusetts, posts Maura Healey, our state Governor.

What’s your Governor’s name? asked Jake Lang, a day earlier, in town for a local pro-ICE counter-demonstration. Quincy’s own Tommy Aronne (aka Tommy Savage) a local poster boy for a local hate page, was right there with an answer, in his usual red hat and goofy smirk, adding fuel to the fire. Maura Healey, she’s a lesbian, he said.

It is easy to consider how much stupidity these two men have to have, to reduce a whole governor to her sexual orientation, in the state and city that invented Boston marriages, no less. Or that these guys are both such inconsummate losers, basing everything about themselves on who they loath and protest because they have nothing else to offer. Or that about the only thing I’ve seen lower in masculine energy is Mark Zuckerberg in a gold chain, talking about it on a podcast.

Or wonder what kind of person would see someone flying in for a hate speech, and advertising they’re going to attend something else called a N***r Rally in another state, then simperingly try to befriend such a loathsome person anyway (in fact because of it), yet still seem awkward AF doing even that?

It feels like an infestation of sorts to have these gatherings happening locally, a nest of mostly toothless and flaccid vipers, to be sure, but nonetheless ones intent on spreading fear and poison.

Harmless trolling and/or basic free speech, this is not.

There are signs I need to protect myself from this sort of psychological carnage, plus the relentless demands of parenting, especially as a woman and a mother of what I personally find to be the world’s most beautiful brown babies.

Gardens are good for that. But mine is a bit overrun at the moment.

I thought they were cucumbers, my husband explains, about some mystery squash that have really taken off, a habit and size more like zucchini. Him and the kids planted them chaotically in what we are calling the kids garden. A newly fenced-in and slightly janky space that has been the source of a surprisingly good harvest so far.

Swiss chard, a few peas and beans, and now this inflorescence of mystery squash flowers. I’ve been picking them mid-morning and stuffing them with a mixture of ricotta cheese, garden herbs, and lemon zest, then lightly breading them and pan frying them in olive oil.

Except, when I am carefully picking only the male flowers (which start earlier and are more frequent) I finally learn what these mystery squash are. Underneath one of the blossoms I see a round scalloped shape that is unmistakable - the patty pan. A Native American squash so beloved in Cajun cuisine that it has its’ own name, the ciblème. My grandmother and I love them. I remember her cooking them smothered, which is just cubing the squash, and putting it in the oven (or a microwave) with a bit of water, butter, pepper and salt, and boiling until cooked.

As I pan-fry about twenty stuffed squash flowers, my mind returns to an uglier matter. I wait for those of us with an ounce of community awareness to get out shovels and mops to clear away the mess these bigots have created in our community. Scrape it up like animal control did that dead baby raccoon I called about next to the school last week. Collect and dispose of it safely like the police did on a needle I found on the sidewalk leading to the park last month. But it has been treated more like horseshit on a New Orleans street, left there as it has flattened into an unrecognizable, if still disgusting, mass that then gets on all our shoes as we walk about our daily business.

But the mayor is not dirtblind. It isn’t that he doesn’t see it. He is banking on it being a threshold error, getting only close enough to this group’s dirty activity to effect the next local election, smear his current political opposition, and return him his rubber stamp city council. So he is getting these far-right wingers to act as influencers, shout that this council is derelict, doesn’t care about firefighters, and didn’t save ENC. It is a brazen political maneuver, to be sure, and one that I don’t think will get him there, but is probably the only shot he’s got at this point, so I see why he’s loath to turn loose of it.

It’s got to feel weird that it was in part his old city council and himself that approved all these big new buildings that are now full of newcomers who aren’t interested in the insular old way things were being done. And I suspect a lot of born and raised residents have found the incessant headlines embarrassing and the cost of living increases concerning, and may be ripe to join them.

After all, backing catholic statues in a public space is one thing, while backing actual real live hate groups and hate influencers connected to those known on a national stage is another.

And if you’re going to try to act like offended residents and newcomers are rats in your own backyard, well these are rats with a vote.

I would hope that leadership in this city can see that we don’t need anyone crashing out in the media because they are being forced to defend or denounce their close relational proximity to neo-Nazis. But, like new apartments lead to new people, that’s clearly where this thing is going right now.

To a place where what (and who) you invite in or plant proliferates until we all get overrun. Whether that’s with neo-Nazis or pattypan squash.

And that is why I firmly believe that the mayor should follow Maura Healey’s lead and denounce our own local hate page and anyone who has participated in encouraging or celebrating a Nazi-adjacent Proud Boy in harassing our city council, including most recently the city council president and her family and constituents at her own fundraiser.

Regular old run of the mill free speech, this was not, considering the context and who did it and what else he does. It was also not free speech to have followed my friend to her car in a menacing manner.

Menacing speech is not free speech. Hate speech is not free speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is not free speech.

I also believe that the city should retain receipts for unfounded claims that cost the city manpower and hours to investigate. People using fake or frivolous reports to the DPW and the public health department as a more local and petty (albeit far less dangerous) version of SWATing.

But I don’t have forever to reflect on it, or any time to outline how best to stomp it into oblivion. I have a lot else going on.

I don’t know how many more med adjustments I can bear, I think. My husband’s prescriber has decided to do away with stimulants for his ADHD altogether, thinking he might respond better to another class of drugs. I agree that the plan seems correct, but it’s a lot of caregiving work on me as we make the switch.

Executive overfunctioning.

The three pound gelatinous mass of fat and protein in my head already wants to do something other than find missing keys, issue time reminders, change diapers, tell kids to stop throwing a ball at light fixtures in the house, or google medications like I’m some kind of a backup doctor that’s way too invested, while making sure I put a specific brand of yogurt on the BJ’s grocery order. But I can barely hear myself think over my preschooler’s incessant attempts at conversation, and the baby’s ill-fated attempts to grab our cat by one paw.

I love your belly, momma.

I have a brain, momma.

I want to throw the spiky ball in the house, momma.

I’m a police, you’re a beef, momma.

A thief? I ask, suddenly tuning in.

No, a beef that smells good with cheese!

I make lunch and think about what I have had stolen. My own sanity perhaps. My brain feels like a slab of beef. Or maybe a slab of bacon that Jake Lang slapped a Quran with, outside Zoran Mamdani’s house. Unclear.

I go to the Y and swim to clear my head. I learn an elderly friend of mine that I like to chat with at the sauna, a former bareknuckle boxer with a wonderful Irish accent and wild life stories, has stopped coming due to stage 4 cancer, newly discovered. I sign a group card for him and wipe away tears that look like pool water.

I return home to find a health inspector and a pile of Amazon packages on my front steps.

The health inspector tells me I’ve been reported to the city for rats, by two different people. I immediately smell a rat. Not the rodent kind, but the human variety. I’ve never seen a rat in my front yard, and now two different people have suddenly claimed to have done so?

There’s some people in this city who really don’t like me, I explain. They belong to a certain Facebook page. I don’t believe this report was made in good faith.

He raises his eyebrows. It’s clear he’s not here for shenanigans.

He gestures towards my apple tree, its long branches bowing with the weight of a small orchard, and tells me that fallen fruit can attract rats. I explain that this tree is grafted with four different kinds, they are all here for our eating, and any that are unfit get added to a nice rat-proof compost bin in the back that I got at a resident discount from the DPW.

My garden could be a bit more manicured if I didn’t have three small children, I explain. But this definitely is a planned garden, not some overgrowth. I’m expecting at least 20lbs of Concord grapes if all goes well.

We end up chatting, first about horticulture, then about secondhand rodenticide poisoning. He is clearly a very nice and knowledgeable man.

He asks me about a few other things I’m growing and we discuss rats again. I tell him that my shed is old and a couple have found their way in there before, but the neighbor’s cat is a hunter, so they don’t last. My concern is the poisoned ones and what that could do secondarily to whatever eats them.

We briefly discuss warfarin and Coumadin, blood thinner medications that started out as rat poison.

Now the hawks that eat dying rats get such thin blood that they can’t recover from injuries. Less hawks then mean more rodents.

He tells me that the smart traps, which make sure it’s a rat and not a chipmunk or a squirrel, are similar in cost to the poison, as poison requires coming out three times.

I say the smart traps sound smarter. He gives me his card. I text him my number.

We say goodbye in the rain.

I bring my packages inside and open them. Belated birthday presents to myself from an online secondhand shop. A desk light. A small vintage leather purse.

A pair of red slouchy ankle boots I ordered (and can’t wait to wear) haven’t arrived yet.

I hear from my city councilor later. There was no evidence of rats upon inspection he says. Nothing further needs to be done.

The rain stops and I go out with my kids to the front garden. My eldest is dressed in a princess costume, checking on the panicle hydrangeas that start off white and slowly turn pink as summer progresses. She likes pink better, so she waves her wand at them, wishing them to change faster. My son carefully opens pods on a false indigo plant, quietly planting its’ seeds along the garden edge. The baby reaches for bees on a tall cup plants, swaying in the wind like tiny sunflowers.

I saw a rat! my husband says.

What??! I respond, looking around. Where?!

Yeah, a whole family of ‘em. Five in a row. I think I will open a restaurant, call it ratatouille!

He doubles over cackling, knowing he got me.

I smack him on the arm, grinning, then break into unplanned laughter of my own, in the peace of our planned garden.