Cheesy… and Proud of It!

I’ve come to realize something: the older I get, the more cornier I become. I know it, because my wife constantly reminds me.

I want to put a plastic duck in the flower bed, the kind with legs that move when the wind blows, powered by a little windmill. Corny—that’s me to a T!

Impostor

I have to admit that, even though I’ve probably always been a bit of a cornball—being a kid from the working class—I didn’t always want to admit it. In fact, there was a time when I thought I was pretty sophisticated. Yes, seriously! That was when I started university, a giant leap forward compared to my father, who had only ever attended a village school.

All of a sudden, I was surrounded by the sons and daughters of the middle class—young people who went skiing in Europe during study week, who had attended private school, who had taken piano lessons, and who had their papers typed up. I tried to act like them, move like them, talk like them, go to the same nightclubs, dress like them. Luckily, it was fashionable to wear rags in the mid-1970s, because I couldn’t afford anything else.

I was convinced that my background as a poor farmer didn’t show. Of course, in certain social situations, I gave myself away instantly, because my manners must have seemed terribly rough (even today, at the table, don’t ask me which fork to use), and I couldn’t tell (and still can’t tell) the difference between a top-vintage Burgundy and the cheapest, nevertheless, I didn’t consider myself a hick by any means.

Getting worse with age

It was when I started gardening that my true cheesy side came out. No, I don’t have a “Manneken-Pis” statue in my flower bed yet, but I do have (or at least, I had, because they were stolen) some plastic flamingos. And I use pieces of asphalt as stepping stones and old nylon stockings to tie the tomatoes to their stakes: that’s pretty cheesy, don’t you think!

And I’m getting “worse” as I get older, because I’ve moved past the stage where what other people say matters to me. I care more and more about expressing myself, just as I am… and it’s not always pretty to look at.

Cheesiness under control

I can tell my wife is starting to get worried. She’s pretty good at keeping my tacky tendencies in check around the house (“You’re not really going to wear that, are you?”), but I’ve got a knack for presenting her with a fait accompli in the garden. Since she doesn’t know anything about landscaping herself, she has to trust me to a certain extent… but she knows my penchant for tackiness, too. Hence her doubts.

My future rooftop garden (see “Finally, I’ll Earn My Place in Paradise!”) worries her, I know. She’s never seen a suburban bungalow with a rooftop garden (neither have I, for that matter) and doesn’t seem to be able to really picture it. And my description of the final effect (“It’s like a cardboard box with green spaghetti hanging down all around it”) doesn’t seem to reassure her much.

What really worries her, however, is the statue that’s supposed to serve as the focal point for the future water garden.

An ambitious project

In fact, I’m planning an entire water garden: several interconnected ponds, one of which is large enough to serve as an ice rink in the winter; waterfalls and cascades pouring so much water that Niagara Falls will pale in comparison; a deck designed to look as if it’s floating on the water; and so on.

The centerpiece will be a statue for the center of the main pond. I know exactly what I want… and it doesn’t exist on the market: I’ll have to have it custom-made. In fact, for years I’ve had this image in my head of three little, rather “Disney-esque” fish with big, bulging eyes, leaping out of the water, looking completely panicked, one of them turning its head backward, a look of utter terror in its eyes. Water will flow from the top of the statue, enhancing the impression that the fish have just leaped out of the water. And right behind them, with a stream of water to make it look like it’s moving, a shark fin. Cheesy, isn’t it? I’m dreaming about it and can’t wait to install it: it’s scheduled for year 23 of my 47-year landscaping plan.

For better or worse

But I’m only in my 10th year… and my wife’s already getting annoyed!

“Don’t worry, honey!” I want to tell her, “It won’t be half as cheesy as the multicolored totem pole featuring Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (another nod to Disney) that I plan to set up, right out in the open, in the side yard!” But I have a feeling that won’t reassure her.

Oh well, didn’t she marry me for better or for worse anyway?

Cheesy once, cheesy always—that’s my motto!