I’ve been working in my garden which proves that my sanity is to be questioned. Sane people would throw in the trowel;) but it gives me a bit of time to process certain thoughts and it is conducive to others.
God put man in a garden. Do you ever wonder about that? I mean, past the point that it makes a nice garden sign. Have you ever looked through the Bible to see other garden references and think about sociological constructs that might have grown from that ground?
In some ways gardens can be compared to government forms. There is the old style garden of the Kings vast estate, with the common man’s small square of subsistance. There is the everyman’s garden that upholds and gives interest for the state gardens. There is the common garden surrounded by the individual garden and farming plots. There is also the quintessential modern American garden: large open space of unimaginative shrubs and useless lawn with all the real gardening taking place in the state-owned spaces or some scattered uncompromising and independently minded gardeners in their little spaces- sometimes having to fight to keep their space their own.
Yes, gardens are great hands-on learning.
But outside the idea of government gardens, there is the idea of the family being a garden, the place where you produce the outcomes of your own life. All the regular ways we deal with that are described: enclosed gardens, neglected gardens, working in others gardens to ones detriment, gardens of delight, brokendown gardens.
Can the huge corporate farms ever give the quality of life that ones own garden would? Or the fabric of family farms working together?
Because that, as a society, is what we are heading for. Visited the large mega farms lately? Or just in passing notice the news? The manure problems, the flies, the stench, and the disease control problems? but, also the cheap prices and convenience of not thinking or working much for ones daily bread….
Big brother has it all together for you…… and so attractively packaged.
Because freedom requires some sweat of the brow and that is becoming quite unsavory to our society. Except for those curmudgeonly individuals….. keeping their own gardens with no thanks to you.