Manny and Me

They arrive at 6:30 a.m. on a bright, clear November Friday morning, the Mexican gardeners who work for my landlord. Manny is the honcho, his helper today is Jose or Juan or Chuy or Paco or Pedro. The helpers come and go, Manny, unfortunately, remains. Hate is a strong and overused word, so I won’t claim to hate Manny, though I dislike him, intensely.

We have history, Manny and I, of broken pots and trampled poppies, sunflowers, morning glory, geraniums and wildflowers; of delicate new grass, roped off with yellow caution tape, mowed weeks before its time, the yellow tape left on the ground. How many times have I asked Manny to be careful of my flowers only to find my request ignored? How many times did Manny or one of his helpers leave the back gate wide open, allowing Sparky, our Jack Russell Terrier, to get out and reconnoiter the neighborhood? Sparky always came home, but as we live on a busy street where drivers routinely flaunt the speed limit, he could have been creamed.

And then there are the trash cans, two for regular trash, one blue can for recyclables. How many times has Manny or one of his boys filled my recycle bin with grass clippings, leaves, twigs or good old-fashioned dirt?

I’ve lost count.

You might be thinking that my problem with Manny springs from lack of a common language, but this isn’t the case. Manny has been in California for more than thirty years and speaks English very well, so there’s no question that he understands me when I point to a four foot tall sunflower and say, “Please don’t pull this up.”

Invariably Manny will nod vigorously and say, “OK, OK.” But as soon as I turn my back, Manny jerks the plant from the ground or stomps it with one of his cloudhoppers. Though I don’t have any concrete evidence to conclude that Manny enjoys murdering my innocent plants, I imagine he does.

My landlord knows Manny is an imbecile, a classic “blow and go” sort of gardener who takes no pride in his work, but because Manny shows up regularly my landlord keeps him on the payroll. This is a sad commentary on the pool of gardening talent in our town. The gig is a snap and if my landlord would let me, I could do it as well if not better, if only because I can tell the difference between a flower and a weed.

Lack of control over when the gardeners come and what they do (or don’t do) when they get here, is a tenant’s dilemma, never easily resolved. On the one hand I appreciate that my landlord tries to maintain his property, even if he hires an imbecile to do it. On the other, there’s no sound quite as annoying or nerve rattling as the whine of a leaf blower before a man has downed his first cup of coffee.