A few summers ago, sitting poolside with my husband Jewell and my cousin Joy, we started singing the theme song to campy, classic sitcom Green Acres. If you grew up with the reruns, you know the tune is quite catchy. Perhaps, it’s the best part of the show. 

While writing this, it occurred to me why the character of Lisa Douglas, the chic, Hungarian-born Park Avenue socialite wife of Oliver Douglas, resonates so much with gay men. During the famous opening number, we see her snatched from a fabulous, luxurious penthouse world by her husband, Oliver. To wit: How many gay boys who grow into their own sense of fabulous feel it was robbed from them before they even touch it? We mourned for Lisa, we mourned unknowingly for La Côte Basque!

But now in the rural Four Corners, we have ample space to garden. Enough that when I sing the Green Acres song, I restyle it Queen Acres. Not enough room for a goat,* no space for chickens, and certainly not the “free ram” I saw on Facebook. 

(*Golden Girls reference.)

“You know my college mascot is a ram! It’s a sign!” 

But no, husband and sister-in-law vetoed. Some nonsense about free online almost always being bad. Some folderol about a free ram being dangerous. 

Our first garden here was thwarted by bad soil, sprayed by others with weed killer. We thought a year later the soil would have healed. Nope. Dead. So, last year, my enterprising husband found a farmer advertising free manure. 

I was amused and skeptical of the whole situation. Two city gays, both in designer sunglasses, going to pick up a load of horseshit. But when we pulled up to a gated farm with beautiful horses, it felt ideal. Then, the farmer! A dead ringer for Nick Offerman. The mustache, the serious, steadfast, indirect gaze, and his nuanced, yet monotone diction felt honest. 

Using an actual front hoe tractor, he loaded us up with a literal half-ton of … horseshit. This was not my first experience with the material. I was born in, and subsequently spent the first few years of my life in, New Jersey. This is where Mom and Dad had a rather large vegetable garden. 

When I was six, we were awaiting delivery of the annual … horseshit. 

“When’s the horshit coming, Dad?” I was excited as I was to “help” him with the rows of tomatoes soon to cover half the property. 

“Don’t say that,” my father chastised.

“Bucky,” Mom said, standing by pale yellow honeysuckle, “you call it horseshit all the time! Where do’ya think he gets it from?” 

After a few beers on the porch, looking at our beautiful horsehit, it was time to haul it in. Shovel by shovel, as we had no wheelbarrow.

“It doesn’t look ready,” said Jewell, who spent enough time gardening with his mother in New Mexico. “But, if we till it, that should make up for the weed killer.” 

“He has to be honest,” I countered. “He’s a dead ringer for Nick Offerman!”

We rotated the soil, then planted some $300 worth of plants. Tomatoes, of course, string beans, endless zucchini, and squash — enough to supply the baby food industry. We planted carrots, onions, garlic, chili, bell peppers, and tomatillos. Even a screen of corn at the front of the garden to forbid the jealous gaze of any vegetarian thief! 

We waited. We watered. We waited again. We watered repeatedly. Everything died. 

“I think we got some bad shit,” was Jewell’s assumption. 

Thinking about my lost ram, “If it’s free and online it’s bad.” But, forever the loyal husband, I didn’t say anything. 

The horsehit had not matured. It was months old. Not a full twelve months old. Like the remnants of weed killer, raw or green manure burns roots. 

“I wanna say something to that farmer,” we agreed while later passing his land. 

We wouldn’t head over to his house unannounced. People here have guns. Yet, I’d get my chance. 

Later that summer, a woman and her husband approached my register. 

It was the local Nick Offerman!

While exchanging pleasantries, I heard my mother from her heavenly rest, in a whisper particular to her sense of urgency dealing with the petulance of my childhood, “Don’t say anything, don’t cause any…”

“Say, you didn’t happen to sell, err,” on purpose, “gift my fiance and me a pile of…oh, what do you call it? Manure, I mean. Well, it was bad horseshit. It burned $300 worth of plants.”

“I told you not to say anything,” I could hear Mom scream.

Mr. Farmer looked down. Mrs. Farmer looked up. Her face said, “I told you this would happen.” 

“I don’t think I remember…” 

“Oh, it was you. Anybody ever tell you you look just like Nick Offerman…”

“All the time,” interjected his wife.

Well, our flowers did tremendously well the past two years – Monsanto and bad horseshit be damned – and are about to burst again. As for our veggies, we will have enough, but maybe the soil still needs another year.

Martha Stewart, who probably quotes another great gardener here, said: “It can take five years to build a garden, and one year to destroy it.” That’s a chance we’re willing to take. 

Now, to install the free bathtub we get to use as a fishpond!