By John Otrompke
For Wax, who encouraged me to try writing with AI
[The text of this essay contains the secret for the cognoscenti
Come with me as, like Virgil in the Aneid, I give you a tour of the community gardens of Manhattan’s lower east side. These urban oases, numbering more than 50 in the East Village and Lower East Side alone, represent some of the oldest cultivated spaces in NYC’s history.
In April 1974, a modest dollar-a-month lease gave birth to the “Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden,” marking the dawn of NYC’s community garden movement. Today, these spaces thrive under the stewardship of various organizations:
Like nature’s own clock, the garden season runs from April Fool’s to Halloween, with gardens throwing open their gates on weekends, welcoming visitors to their green sanctuaries.
This landscape of cultivation brings to mind the bold, unrestricted experimental gardens of my Chicago youth. As we walk from the Hope Garden to the Peach Tree Garden, past De Colores Community Yard, Rumi’s words echo: “Beyond all your talk of good and evil, there is another field altogether. Come sit with me in it.”
At the Liz Christy Community Garden, memories of Chicago surface: “Did you happen to see a morbidly skinny East Indian guy drinking gin and pulling nails in the snow?” The answer, naturally, is no – Avi lived in Chicago some 31 years ago (and besides, this is a work of pure fiction).
For those who venture into realms of imagination, here’s a campaign seed: Picture characters in a western, hired to bring justice to a bandit-plagued frontier town. Their pursuit leads them through an ancient mine during an otherworldly orange sandstorm, emerging into the mutation-filled, radiation-soaked landscape of Gamma World, complete with its strange technology, superstitious culture, and secretive societies.
Reality, however, brings its own challenges. The Elizabeth Street Garden faces sacrifice to government plans for another homeless shelter, a reminder that even these green sanctuaries aren’t immune to urban development pressures.
Yet the neighborhood offers its own comforts. Though it may not be the Left Bank, establishments like Gotham and Housing Works – NYC’s first legal dispensary, complete with its inviting café and used bookstore – provide modern sanctuaries of their own.
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