Read by Michael Flamel

I was VERY young—4 years old, to be exact – when “Police Scientist” (I always loved that job description) Barry Allen was standing in front of a shelf loaded with chemicals, and a lightning bolt came through the window, hit the shelving, struck Barry, and doused him with the presumably now-electrified chemicals all at the same time.

Luckily, this occurred in a comic book (actually one of THE comic books, Showcase #4, which ushered in the Silver Age of Comics and led to the creation of such beloved characters as Spider-Man, The Hulk, and those X People), so that instead of becoming dead of several causes, as would be the case with you or me,Barry gained super-speed and, of course, immediately sewed himself into a bright red costume and fought crime as The Flash.

I bet it was a close celestial relative of that very lightning bolt (or at least a suspicious cousin) that bestowed upon me my un-gardening superpowers. (As Captain Compost, The Human World’s Greatest Organic Gardener, I battle pests both insect and human!)

This occurred back when I was a typical, ordinary, regular-powered un-gardening human. My wife, Kathy, and I were living in a HUGE apartment (we were the only occupants of a gigantic second floor that sat atop four different businesses) in Phil-Elf-Ya (you know, the Sity uh Brudderly Love). It would have been a perfect place for such a great-looking young couple to live except that it had almost zero greenery. The “almost” was a magnificent old tree that occupied a small plot of green between us and intensely busy Bustleton Avenue, and its limbs made a great view from our bedroom window as they shielded us from all those Philly drivers.

That tree and measly little swath of grass became less and less “enough” for us every day. We loved the apartment, but yearned for more green and less cars. Then, one night we went out to the movies and came home to see the tree stretched out in pieces all over the grass and concrete pavement. Struck by lightning.  We can take a hint.

So, we loaded up the truck and we moved to Beverleeee. Hills that is. Swimming pools Movie stars …

Oops, sorry—wrong show.

We moved to The Castle—the absolute hands-down nicest place in all of somewhat nearby Levittown, PA. Now, “nicest” in Levittown could have been a race between 600 slow horses, but this estate was truly amazing! It had been built by the folks who ran The Wistar Institute (an internationally renowned immunological research center that’s now located on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania) when they first arrived here from Europe. They were homesick for the old country, and so made the main building of the sprawling estate look like a castle. Six-inch-thick concrete walls. Beautiful hardwoods. A huge 10-foot-high wall surrounding the main house, pool, and cabana.

Levitt himself had even lived there while he built Levittown, which he was gracious enough to build around this mansion and the four or so other original Wistar buildings instead of tearing them down. (Although we had to use it on our mail, we otherwise never acknowledged that we lived in “Levittown” —we told people we lived in Bristol, which was technically correct [it’s the county] and more importantly, was Philadelphia American Bandstand cool. As you may recall if you are old enough, “The kids from Bristol are sharp as a pistol/When they do The Bristol Stomp!”)

The then-current owner was an insurance guy who had spent years restoring the place to its full grandeur. His kids (grown) had just moved out, their side of the castle had been made apartment-like for them as they grew older, and so he decided to try renting it. Be a good idea to have some people on the property when he was away, he thought.

We had only one demand. And he met it. Gave us a thousand square feet right next to the tennis court and promised that his lawn-care people would leave a nice wide DMZ around it where no chemicals would be sprayed. In return, he would get fresh tomatoes and sweet corn and flowers all Summer long.

I got four years of full-sun gardening there.

Full sun.

My eyes get big just thinking about it. We moved from there to our present, heavily wooded home, and shade has been my biggest garden pest ever since. Occasionally I catch the giant trees across the road deliberately leaning over to block out the sun late in the season. And I swear I’ve seen them straining, trying to reach just a little higher when the sun finally rises above their malicious little piney heads around 1 p.m.

Full sun. It seems like a dream to me now…

Sorry. Where were we? That first garden at The Castle? Oh yeah … Gawd! There was so much SUN there!!!!

****SMACK****

Oof; thanks—I needed that.

Anyway, I knew NOTHING. All I had going for me was the latest Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog, a couple of battered old copies of Organic Gardening (back when it was the beloved small size), and my most powerful weapon, a body that was still close enough to its twenties to make a difference.

I don’t recall what divine guidance led to my most important decision that first year, but instead of just plowing under the existing section of lawn with my borrowed tiller (which, if I had done, would have led to exactly one year of gardening for me, and I would probably now be writing funny stories about plumbing), I cut the lawn out in long sections with a linoleum knife and rolled ’em up like harvested sod. Then I started the garden.

And that, of course, made the difference. Instead of battling Grassy Weeds From Hades 10 hours a day, my first garden year was idyllic. I hadn’t co-depended any plant diseases into my soil yet. The legions of pestiferous bugs didn’t know where to find me yet. And my first batch of compost was ready by the time my plants had sucked up the last residual nutrients from the under lawn dirt! (Yes, I realize that, despite my personal purity in plant amendments, the leftovers of earlier lawn care efforts meant that my foist garden was probably far from organic—but I was young and innocent and tossed a lot of fish emulsion around for good luck.)

Everything grew, prospered and was delicious—the sweet corn, the tomatoes, the peppers… The peppers! The “green” peppers turned bright red and got all sweet and tasty! Wahoo! I hadn’t known they did that! I thought green and red peppers were two different animals, like lions and tigers! (It’s that FULL SUN, I tell you; I can taste it)

***SM…HEY! No more slapping! I’ll be good.

That magnificent full sun (I’m OK; I’m OK; just have to remember to breathe.) also gave us astonishing success with some things that we weren’t yet smart enough to know were really difficult to grow in our region. Like luffa gourds. Got seeds from Johnny’s, planted them right in the garden (luckily, next to the rough wooden fence I had erected to help enforce the Lawn Care Accords) —didn’t even start them early—and got a dozen full-size fruits from which we brutally extracted real, working honest-to-gosh sponges. (I seriously think we may even still have one extant sponge from that batch some two decades later.)

And sesame plants. Honest to Murgatroyd. There was a six- pack of them sitting next to the tomatoes and peppers at the otherwise-entirely-normal nursery where we bought plants that first year. Again, we didn’t know that we would not ever see such a thing again in 20 years of gardening and plant shopping, but nevertheless still picked up the six-pack because: 1) we loved cooking with sesame seeds; 2) it seemed like a really cool thing to grow; 3) they were there (often the #1 reason for many people for many things in life); and 4) they seemed like they were lonely and needed a good home.

Yep. Our first year and we were already taking in strays.

They grew like weeds, developed lots of cute little seed pods, ripened, and then were harvested by Larry, Moe, and Curly. We managed to squeeze out a bunch of seeds to use fresh, which was, like, WAY cool. WAY. But then we “realized” we could press the rest for oil. The story gets really ugly after that. I’m not saying anything more about it on the advice of my lawyer…

But back to the subject at hand, why did we feel this need to garden? Why did we have this insatiable urge to grow lots of our own veggies and experiment with weird things and battle weeds and bugs and spend beautiful Summer days sweating over the poor lone tomato plant that didn’t look as happy as its brethren?

I dunno. Could have been all those “day dates” to the nearby horticultural showcase, Longwood Gardens, back when I was in college. Could have been the women I went out with in college and after, whom, Longwooded or not, all seemed to have an affinity for growing things. And, of course, it could simply have been the opportunity to have a legitimate excuse to get out there and rope and ride a 5-hp tiller, (I am a guy, after all .)

Could have been a lot of things. But it’s a (bad word) certainty that if those first four years hadn’t been spent in FULL SUN (sound of the angelic chorus rising) you wouldn’t be reading this today.

Wouldn’t be hard to write lots of funny stories about plumbing. Not hard at all, no siree.

‘Course, then the tomatoes wouldn’t be as nice . . . ❖