Garden Holocaust

We planted our garden late this year and our goal was for it to not transform into a pit of weeds. It happened last year, in my weakened state, my lung still recovering from a spontaneous collapse, I watched with grief as nature took its natural course. Dominant, aggressive plants, which could grow faster and stronger, rampaged without remorse through the newly planted seedlings. Those poor tomato plants...I had named them in March. Jim, Doris and Ignatious were all strangled to death by an invasive species of violets. Jerusalem Artichokes smothered Mary, Paul and Jesus (seems nature is fond of religious allegory). My one heirloom, Sir William Xavier III, imported from a special nursery south of Kent, was rubbed out by a nearby zucchini. It was a holocaust on a community garden scale.

Painstakingly did I revisit, but each visit was like stabbing my side with a blunt trowel. With agony I observed the perfect destruction and obliteration of three months of labor. My work, my efforts, soon disappeared under a rich green quilt of foliage. After a few more visits, I could no longer bear the sight. For in this small 16x12 foot space did I realize the inevitable path of human effort. This space was a microcosm of all existence. I saw that all human efforts were temporal, were minutiae, were rain drops in the vast cycle of earthly history. The fact that my green beans were decimated, my petunias pulverized, my carrots eviscerated, is testament to the power of nature and its inevitable and fateful march towards supreme conquest. We humans may think we have an upperhand, but it is a folly to assume dominance against a force which will stampede forward well beyond a human life span. I mourned not only the loss of my lettuce, but also the hopelessness of human effort.

One year passed and it was winter. A cold Boston day that makes you wish for warmer climates, I walked to the garden. By now, it was all death. Everything was yellow and crunched loudly under my foot steps. I was a giant walking on the skeletons of old friends. I stooped low to the ground and brushed aside the frail remnants. I looked at the brown rich earth, the same earth which I poured my sweat, energy and passion into a year before. I grabbed a handful and took in the scent, and something told me that this was not the end.

I stand now in the midst of my Eden and in front of me is a line that I have drawn in the dirt. I have dared Nature to cross it. I know its not long before it does.