I am a roof gardener. That means I go up on the Harbour Square roof which has been designed with 14 private terraces for the privileged people who have connecting stairways from their apartments and the other third of the roof which has been left for the commoners of which I am one. In the common area, there were a number of brick planters built to hold 24x24x24 inch boxes. There are three planters that hold 8 boxes and one that holds 4 boxes. I farm 2 of those boxes on the northwest side. This spring of 2010, I have branched out into 4 empty containers that showed up last summer on our roof one day. They are fiberglass and are about 30x20x10 inches and floated around from the east end to the west end and back again. One day this spring I decided to buy some potting soil and peat moss and amendments and plant them as well with a couple of apple trees that would be espaliered and some flowers that could be enjoyed by all and used for cutting. To keep with an edible theme, I added blueberry bushes.
Roofs are wonderful places to garden. They are sunny and there are no squirrels and few birds for some reason. The rats aren't up there and even the bugs are fewer. There is always a nice breeze and I like to think that I am helping to eliminate the heat sink effect by planting the roof instead of just letting the concrete pavers soak up all that heat and letting whatever rain falls on them go into the sewer waste water run off. I thought there hasn't been much demand for gardening space on the roof of the north building at Harbour Square when I moved in. When I went to the roof to look it over in October of 2008, there were a few scraggly weeds and a couple of conifers in the northwest box to help mitigate the wind and a couple in the southwest box to do the same.
By the time I went up in the spring of 2009, someone had cut down the 2 conifers on the northwest side because they had disappeared. I later found out it had been the man who I shall hereafter refer to as the Stupid F**k or "SF" for short. Although this man is only a part time resident of Harbour Square and has 2 other homes where he can garden, he decided that he was going to turn the roof of the 560 building into his own little truck garden. On first examination, this is a fine noble undertaking. He would grow vegetables and feed his neighbors. Only he didn't consult anyone. Not the grounds committee. Not Verna , the adminitrator who had always overseen the roof garden allocations. Not the other gardeners who had put out a few tomatoes on the east end of the building. Not the people who had the private terrace boxes above N916. He just planted every box on the roof after he cut down the two windbreak conifers on the northwest side and who knows what else he got rid of.
By the end of March 2009 when I went up there were 2 boxes left unworked and unplanted. I checked with Verna and she said to go ahead and plant and mark them with my apartment number. They were in the Northwest planter next to a magnificent old rosemary bush. I had some wheat I wanted to put out. I also had some chives and marigolds that I always put as companion plantings for my heirloom tomatoes. Everything was OK until I got my first note of challenge from "SF" asking what I was doing in his garden. I replied on the message board that I had been told that I could have the space. "SF" then told me it was first come first serve and he had claimed it in January and cut down the tree and planned to plant cucumbers in the boxes I had planted. I didn't understand why he couldn't put the cucumbers in the pea boxes that would be finished by cucumber planting time but maybe they don't double plant in England where he is from. I made that suggestion and he thanked me and I thought everything was OK. He decided to "help" me with my plot. I would come up and find weeds had been pulled. That was fine. Then I went up and found my entire wheat crop had been eradicated. I left a note asking him not to help me any longer.
We met some time during the winter face to face and he seemed a harmless old coot. We had many mutual friends and I learned of his other homes and gardens. I also learned of his hatred of flowers and other nonproductive plants. He thought all plants should produce an edible or aromatic crop. He let the rosemary and lavender by because they could be "used."
So the spring came and he once again claimed all the boxes by January but left my 2 alone and he even complimented me on my tomato cages. There was a HUGE blowup when a new owner bought N916 and actually wanted to plant her own boxes! "SF" practically had a heart attack when he went up and she had planted tomatoes in his pea bed!!!! Of course, he had opened her gate and planted peas in her private planter to begin with. He was incensed that he had brought manure from his farm to improve those boxes! How dare she pull up his pea seedlings! N916 hadn't even seen the seedlings when she planted. She thought the previous owner had cleaned the boxes out for the sale.
Then there was the soil theft after I filled the fiberglass boxes at the west end. "SF" had a few boxes on the southwest end where he usually planted cucumbers that were kind of low on soil mix. When I filled my planters with a VERY distinctive soil mix to a very specific level, did he think I wouldn't notice that he took several gallons and moved it over to his cuke boxes? Like I said he is a "Stupid F**k".
Despite that and in spite of my better judgement, I agreed to water "SF's" boxes for him while he was at his other homes during the summer. I did so faithfully even on the hottest days. His cucumbers grew very well and he always managed to come back on just the right days to pick them. Did he ever offer to give me one? Did I ever take one? No, on both counts. Then at a committee meeting in late July he accused me of stealing his cucumbers. After he has taken my soil and several of my tomatoes. I lost it and slammed my notebook on the table and told him he was a "Stupid F**k" and that I would no longer be watering his plantings in his absence. Just because he was a Stealer (I was trying to keep the alliteration going), that does not make everyone else the same.
I did not water from that day to this. After a week of no watering everything looked pretty sorry. So he ripped everything out by the roots his next visit. He even ripped out the tomatoes someone else had been watering with all the tomatoes on the vine and threw them away. The next time he came to visit, he wasn't content to let things be. He ripped out all the moss rose (portulaca) from the cutting garden at the west end that Nancy and I had planted and looked so beautiful. He made sure I knew who did it by leaving little drippings of moss rose over by my little boxes of tomatoes.
Today I went up water and he has been back for another visit. This time he pulled up all the bulbs I had planted around the conifers in the southwestern planter. They were coming up and would have been fall bloomers. What is wrong with this guy? Why is he so vindictive? He would rather have dead dirt than see something he didn't plant. He has the other 2 houses to garden. Why can't he let people here grow things that are pretty as well as useful?
Reading this has been a long journey to no reward I am afraid. Kind of like gardening with "SF".
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