Aurelia C. Scott

While watering her pink cleome one summer, my friend Susan heard her name mentioned on the neighbor’s side of a six foot fence that divides their backyards.

“Did you see that Susan has painted her garden shed purple?”

“Uh-huh. Never can tell about your neighbors.”

“Well, you can tell that she’s from away, that’s for sure.”

Susan spent the next half-hour in a back-killing crouch, not wanting the white-haired sisters on the other side of the fence to know that she had heard them. “I couldn’t even go inside in case they heard the door bang!” And, she added, “The shed is lavender. A cheerful shade of lavender.”

A crouch would not have worked for me, as the fence that divides my back yard from my neighbors’ yards is three feet high and full of holes. It is an ancient chain link fence that sparrows and finches like to perch in. Despite its popularity with the avian population we plan to replace it soon with a fence made of wood. Picket or lattice fencing, probably, to complement the style of our 1886 Victorian. Whichever style we choose, the fence will be no more than four feet high.

It’s the neighbors, you see. We live on Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine, a once-and-still working class part of town, although increasingly the workers are white collar. The housing stock on the Hill consists of three story apartment buildings and two story plus attic single-family homes like ours; back yards are tiny and prized, and for the most part, they abut each other. In our case, five backyards are separated by low, rather worn fences, and in one unfenced section by a narrow bed of Winston Churchill asters and purple dahlias. It is our own little green belt, which would change irrevocably should any of us ever erect a vision blocking barrier. Instead of stockade fencing, we share a view of my perennials and herbs, Larry’s weekly-mown perfection, George’s annuals, Suzanne’s wading pool, and Mary’s brown metal moose statue. The neighborhood cats defend their territories across five yards, gray squirrels chase each other up George’s steps, under Mary’s porch, and across our deck. We make the occasional loan of trowels and offer advice on watering. We share an intimate knowledge of what each of us wears to weed when we think no one is looking.

In a way, no one is. For we also share privacy. A looking-but-not-seeing-each-other that is essential to surviving in crowded places. Knowing when to engage and when to turn away, when to speak up and when to hold one’s council, are skills shared by the inhabitants of our greenbelt. For those of you whose backyards are secluded, this is how it works.

It is 10 am. I am pruning a buddleia when George comes out to water the marigolds planted along his driveway and the pansies set around a small statue of the Virgin Mary that decorates his quilt-sized lawn.

From the corner of my eye I see that George is wearing slippers and, well, they might be blue swimming trunks decorated with yellow smiley faces or they might be short pajamas or, I realize mid-snip, they might be boxer shorts. I scootch my kneeling pad several feet further into our yard and bury myself as completely as possible in a three foot high coreopsis that always needs deadheading. I snip quietly and move even further away toward some salvia nemerosa as George holds a garden hose over each individual marigold. Fifteen minutes go by until I hear the thwack of his screen door.

An hour later as I am trying to tame a climbing rose, George reappears wearing khaki shorts, polo shirt, and glisteningly white sneakers.

“Aurelia!” He waves enthusiastically.

“Good morning, George! Such a gorgeous day.”

“It certainly is. I’m glad I finally got outside to enjoy it.”

I nod my complicity.

“I should find you some extra-long gloves,” he adds as he heads downtown. I wave a bloodied arm toward his retreating figure.

My parents live in a Massachusetts village where the locals retreat each summer into their hedge-guarded back yards to wait out the ever-lengthening tourist season. Sometimes when returning to my urban plot after a visit to the Berkshires, I wish for the dense stand of trees that separates my parents’ back lawn from their neighbor’s. I would like to forsake my virtual privacy and sit in the summer sunshine certain no eyes are on me. Yet, despite the acre that surrounds them, my parents’ backyard conversations are hushed, for they have long known what my friend Susan has just learned – that voices carry even when neighbors remain unseen. Walking along Main Street from the Episcopal to the Congregational Church, I am reminded that all the yards in this village of my youth are private affairs. Only owners or invited guests are able admire one gardener’s lawn carpet of naturalized crocus or inhale another’s heady Marie Louise rose.

So, for the time being, I am content with a low fence and a clear view. I like to be able to hand a fresh picked tomato over the asters to Larry. To stand on our back deck exchanging tips with Mary about how to keep mildew off the phlox. There comes a day mid-summer when I realize that although Suzanne’s children have been screaming in their wading pool all afternoon, I haven’t heard a thing. Just as I know that George has never seen me wear my ancient white nightgown to pick raspberries and I have never seen him wear his boxer shorts to water the marigolds.
© - 2007 Aurelia C. Scott