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Neighborly Advice

My neighborhood—my little divot of the city—is rather colorful and kind of frayed around the edges. My third-floor apartment overlooks a busy intersection, and in the summer my windows are framed with flower boxes.

The corner hums with people, and through petunias I watch the goings-on at the coffee shop, gas station, car wash, and the liquor store on the corner that declares “Fast Delivery!” Here, too, are the urban gypsies—various displaced people who congregate under the crisscross of bridges a few blocks away and stop in for supplies.

On summer days the ad hoc group hangs out across the street on a ledge bordering my neighbor’s yard, arguing and smoking, laughing and drinking, eating and singing songs with someone’s guitar. They also watch the backside of every woman who passes by. From my window I watch their heads turn in unison, giving each female posterior the same thorough examination. When I walk by, sometimes one of the group says hi; sometimes not. Sometimes I give someone money; sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I remember individual faces; sometimes I don’t look closely enough. Sometimes I just walk by and know my rear is getting the once over.

Each of the three summers I’ve lived in this apartment, I’ve planted flowers in the window boxes. Four 6-by-22-inch flower boxes, 16 fledgling petunias, and two enormous bags of potting soil are all I know about gardening.

Late last spring, as I was hoisting potting soil and the large flat of flowers up three flights (four counting the entrance to the building), the fellows on the corner watched. One of them called after me, “Are those going up there?” He pointed up to my apartment. I nodded. He said, “You should try begonias in that south window. They’ll get enough shade.” I was surprised he knew or cared or even realized I had a minute version of a community garden. I thanked him and backed away.

Up in my apartment, I began the all-day project of planting my flower boxes. First, I must take the screens completely off the windows. They don’t simply lift up, and the windows themselves only rise so far. I have to squeeze out the windows to put the soil and seedlings into the boxes, which are fastened to the ledges. On and off throughout the morning, I dangled out each window, like some bizarre urban puppet, filling the boxes with soil, then petunias.

The group watched. “For heaven’s sake, be careful,” one observer hollered up to me. His cohorts laughed in agreement. Now that I knew I had an audience, I was more concerned for my dignity than my safety.

It was a good summer for the petunias, once I got the hang of watering them. One day as I walked past, one of my unofficial neighbors wondered why my flowers looked so peaked, and he asked how often I was watering them. When I told him, he laughed loudly. “Once a week? Should be more like once a day, girl!” He was right. Once I started following his advice, the flowers flourished and swooned over the ledges as if overcome by their own colors. For those brief summer months, I loved walking home, coming to the corner and looking up at the enormous apartment building wearing flowers like a brooch on its brick bosom.

As I write this, we are just limping out of winter, and I look out the same windows at the dried-up stalks that are the pale ghosts of the once-lusty flowers that framed my view. The corner is empty: It’s too cold for hanging around with prepackaged sandwiches and cans of beer.

I hope the peanut gallery is there when the going gets tough this summer—someone’s got to cheer me on as I haul dirt and flowers up all those stairs. I might even try begonias, with a little help from my friends.

Mary Jo Pehl is a Minneapolis writer who enjoys looking at life through flowers.