Comments (0) Best Community Garden - 2002
Soulard Community Garden
There are so many pretty flowers planted in the Soulard Community Garden, located in the very depths of the Soulard jungle. The little rusty-cockle Spaniards are on the verge of emerging to shoot their fall fireworks; soon their berries will glow blue blue electric blue. Then they'll die -- they always die -- and turn this insane rust color, one that stains your fingers and toes when you crawl naked through them. The winding Peters have fully consumed the rosebush; its last gasp seemed to be yesterday, when a geriatric yellow rose turned a sad brown and fell to the ground with a tiny thud. The poppies were cut, sapped and scraped a few months back -- man, were they delicious. Hummingbirds are lined up seven deep at the candlestick cronololodramadums; its nectar tickles their loins, and as each buzzing birdie is sated, it joins a dancing circle that zips across the garden. There, a pretty woman, one of the Soulard community, sits, hands dirty, face clean, and tends to her trellis: jagged angular limbs constructed as an open-air teepee, tied with twine at the top. The blue-and-yellow purple pills have climbed these limbs, and purple dots are popping up all over the place. It's crazy. The hummingbirds brake just above her head, form a halo and start spinning, then race in a row toward the dangling Neutrogenas in their full late-summer glory.
