Aspire!

Though we have it on impeccable
authority, I have my doubts that the
Garden of Eden was such a marvellous
place of fecund order and beauty beyond
belief. I don't believe it to have been other
than the template for gardens to follow.
And the reason for that is simple; Eden
was a place of secret mischief, where
the forces of devilish misdeeds were
hard at work transforming it into a
state of rebellion. How else explain that
Eve was dissatisfied with the life of ease
and plenty she shared with Adam there?
I can see its echoes in my own tiny
garden where all attempts to impose
order fail. Beauty there is, as though by
default, since nature designs and permits
it to flaunt itself with or without my puny
ministrations. But tidiness and regimentation?
Not very likely, since the plants lovingly
tended by the gardener give short shrift
to obedience. They perform as they will
and not as I will them to. They cluster
and they push others aside, they demand
admiration and haughtily deign to flower
and to wane and return another year
but on their own terms, certainly not
mine. The garden represents a natural
conspiracy whose inhabitants appear to
take great pleasure in frustrating anyone
foolish enough to believe that as a gardener
hard work, design and aspirations to
produce a superb work of living art is
attainable. But in the search of perfection
it is always the garden that has the last 
word; the word that Eve used her wiles
to persuade Adam to take that fateful
bite. The rest is, as they say, commentary.