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| C.D. Friedrich (1774-1840) |
Gardens are so ephemeral. And you can go ahead and call me a pessimist or a glass-half-empty kind of guy but every time I see a beautiful garden, there is one nagging question that always pops into my head: What will happen to that garden when the gardener is gone? Considering all the hard work that goes into making a good garden, wouldn't it be nice to think that if some fate would separate the gardener from the garden, a supremely confident, yet beneficent, garden avenger (yes, maybe even wearing a mask, a cape and a pleasant smile) would swoop in and rescue the whole thing from the clutches of Mother Nature who, as we all know, is obsessed with the entire notion of ecological balance and likes nothing more than to give everything an equal shot at life, including things like weeds, pests, deadly viruses, and even telemarketers? But this almost never happens. Few gardens outlive their creators for very long. This became especially clear to me last week when I visited family in Pennsylvania.
