‘gzflhfig issue ‘Spring is the long-awaited‘ season that net/er» comes, too soo endlessly in anticipation. We mark its. progress by inches as it comes.” BY‘ BENNETT LAW _ pring— Eck and ~ ‘ __ S Winterrowd’s “handsome stranger” ~ can be found . once again lingering outside our doors, simply flirtatious at first,- but growing ever bolder, more assertive. All across Vermont gay men rush outdoors to welcome him, attracted to his warmth, and eager to luxuriate in his determi- nation to please. Spring is like the renewal ofa love affair, one in which we don’t mind getting our hands dirty, for as the earth re- awakens, so too does our interest in the rhythms and rituals of gar- dening. Readsboro residents Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd pub- lished A Year at North Hill in I995. The book, an elegantly written and generously pho- tographed recounting of the monthly riches to be enjoyed as a gardener in Vermont, is deserved- ly a perennial on the bookshelves of gardeners across the northeast. Out in the Mountains turned to Eck and Winterrowd to consider the seemingly special affinity gays feel for gardening. Why are many gay men so passionate about gardening? “I once asked J.C. Raulston, a gay man and great gardener, why he had started gar- dening as a child,” explained Winterrowd. “His answer was ' rthat he knew plants couldn’t hurt him. it may be true some day that gay ‘children can grow up without fear and loneliness, but it was not true when Joe or I were children. So gardening provides an early refuge, where everything can be calm and safe and pretty.” Everyone seems to have a few friends (or, if lucky, many friends) who have "slaved for a number of years to create extraor- dinary gardens — intensely per- . sonal, private spaces that are uniquely theirs. These gardeners seem driven to refashion their landscape — their particular place in the world. Winterrowd understands this drive. “Garden-making is the impulse to create a safe, beautiful world to some degree under one’s control, away from the world at large, which has until recently seemed to many gay men to be dangerous, threatening, rejecting of their very existence. In general garden theory, gardens are always understood to be enclosed, sequestered from the greater world by fences, walls, hedges, boundaries. This first general rule of garden-making is attractive to gay men, who crave to live their lives as they wish, without prying or censor, and to shape their V world as they please, without Welcoming the Handsome Stranger Readsboro’s Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd wrote the book on seasonal gardening in the Green Mountains external comment orjudgment. “I will be very curious to know, if I ever can,” Winterrowd continued, “whether all these A Year at North Hill includes the observation, “Probably the first step after the most abject needs for survival are n, like a lover home from a long voyage, whose arrival is prefigured -- from A Year at North Hill, by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd can itself bring pleasure long ‘ before the full flowering of this achievement is realized. “Gardening as an activi- left, North Hill authors Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd “Gardening as an activity represents a rare synchrony between“ mind and body — like dance - and has an even more special pleasure as a result.” explanations for gay gardeners, based as they are on intolerance, will fade as the world changes and, fi'om our perspective, improves its attitude towards us. So far it does not seem to be so, for we know many young gay gardeners.” met is to grow something pretty, just becauseit is pretty and for no practical reason.” But there is even more to gardening for gay men than just the chance to re- imagine their environment, albeit in a prettier configuration. The physical demands of the process ty represents a rare synchrony between mind and body - like dance — and has an even more special pleasureas a result. For many gay men,” noted Winterrowd, “the very physicality of gardening is wonderful. They may not be good at tennis or golf