Impudent Imposters

 

Although as a breed they are her ardent
admirers, gardeners in their absurd conceit
also consider themselves, though they are
mere emulators, nature's rivals. For nature
herself the challenge is non-existent to her
nonchalant expertise in nurturing life on
Earth. For gardeners the science of botany
and the excited pleasure of considering
themselves responsible through their
concentrated labour in coaxing a garden
to bloom leads them to the exhilarating
but innocently absurd conclusion that their
ministrations are wholly to account for the
luxuriant colour, texture, fragrance and
architecture of a garden so slight in its
indifferent scale not to be compared to the
wholesale grandeur of nature's accomplished
creations of geological splendour and
uncountable variety of life-forms some
of them self-contained and self-sustaining.
The micro-Edens so beloved of gardeners 
clinging to the illusion that their knowledge 
and efforts alone coaxed growing things 
to obey and preen their presence for the 
self-genuflecting delusion leading to the 
self-appointed role of garden steward
reflects the hubris of humans, yet another
creation of the great manipulator of matter
she alone designed and brought to existence.