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26 June 2007

Grow Your Own

This is a typically funny, truly British movie, full of eccentric characters with funny senses of humor, and really really bad British teeth. I wonder if this movie will ever get airplay overseas, though. Nonetheless, it's not a complete waste of two hours of your life.

Most of the movie takes place in a community garden, and centers around "foreigners" getting garden plots and how that disrupts the garden community.

As a "foreigner" myself, I found that plot kind of touchy. In the garden, there are three main "groups" of foreigners: one African, one Chinese, and one Middle Eastern. The Brits in the movie are polite but not friendly, and eventually they're not nice at all to the foreigners.

It was actually quite disturbing. Yes, I am a little touchy about the whole big issue of immigration and foreign-ness. Every day, I am reminded that London is not my home; so often I am asked when am I going back home, meaning, moving back to America. And it doesn't matter how many times I say, "London is my home," people still wonder. I wonder how many years I'll have to live here before people stop thinking that I'm just visiting.

On a lighter note, about the community garden in the movie. It was so sad and trashy, and yet the gardeners took such pride in it. It was set in a poor, depressed area. (I wonder where.)

I had a plot in a community garden once, up in Montreal. I lived on Nun's Island, which was a small island in the archipelago that is Montreal. The nuns used to inhabit the island, but they were gone, and apartments were built. I lived and worked on Nun's Island for one year. I loved it. I loved the snow, and I loved my garden.

It was there that I realized how much work gardening is. It's amazing. Luckily, Dad was visiting early in the spring, so he helped with turning the soil, planting, and basic hauling. Thank goodness, because I don't think I could've done it alone.

As the summer progressed, I remember it being fun, walking through the forest, to my little garden. Watching my garden grow. It was peaceful and rewarding.

So, I do imagine and understand the social worker in the movie, and her idea of gardening your way to mental health. It worked in the movie, after all, didn't it?

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