GARDEN

Cultivating a garden is an attempt to civilise and beautify nature. Just as civilisation is an attempt to cultivate and beautify man. If successful, if through sheer love and forbearance the garden blooms forth the most magnificent fruits, it can leave one gasping in awe and wonder.

But lurking in the shadows of both nature and man is an untamed and wild savage: the more you try and tame it, the more savage and wild it is liable to become. All of which may lie hidden below the surface, but it will surely arise when you least expect it.

That is not to say that cultivating a garden or man is a task that is not worthwhile. Indeed it is so, given that the opportunity to display love and forbearance, in any endeavour, is rewarding in itself.

It is simply asserting the fact that the thorn and nettle – while you may not like or appreciate it as much as the rose or lily – is as valid an expression as any.

If nature didn’t intend it to be there it wouldn’t be there. As such, until nature decrees otherwise, the wild and the savage cannot be eradicated.

© Phillip A. Klein March 2008