Taming Nature, Was It Meant To Be?

I stood on our porch this morning and gazed at the sea of greenery in the backyard.   Several hues and heights of green fluttering gently in the wind, presented a sight that would bring calm to any mind.   A few more steps and I stood under three magnificent trees, took a deep breath and looked up at the canopy formed by their knotty branches.   The clear blue sky playing hide-and-seek with the leaves and a few bright yellow butterflies dancing amidst the sun rays immediately made me wonder if that is why we tend to look up when we think of God.

Suddenly a sharp insect bite brought the reflective frame of my mind to an instant halt.   I realized that the sea of green I was standing in, was actually an overgrown mass of knee-high weeds, and mounds of crab-grass that had somehow managed to not get engulfed by the dandelions and poison ivy. Such a shame
, I thought; to let this place get into such a disparaged condition.   Hey! Wait a second, I thought again; hadn’t this very sight from the porch just brought calm to my mind.

Thus began the conflict, the battle of right versus wrong!   One part of me told me to get a glass of iced tea, sit on the porch swing and enjoy nature as it was meant to be.   Let it all grow wild, let the survival of the fittest come into play- who cares whether it is poison ivy, crab-grass, dandelions or any other plant. They all look serenely beautiful from a distance.   The other part, of course blamed me for being languid and not allowing nature to nurture as it was meant to be.   Get down on your knees, pull out the weeds, dig the soil, soften it, knead it, water it and plant something useful.   Watch the glory of the saplings germinating, flowers coming to fruit and then sit on the swing and enjoy the bounty.

So I sit on the swing, without the iced tea, without the bounty and ponder.   Who am I to pull out these vibrant greens that seem to grow so possessively on this piece of land?   They were here before I moved into this house.   Or a larger question, who am I to try to regulate what sprouts from the womb of Mother Earth?   That too, for my own benefit?   In a perfect world order, would I have the moral authority to do so?   Now, is it truly my lethargy that is feeding these audacious notions or have I really hit upon an all important query in life?   At this point, I don’t have a resolution and the pondering needs to continue.   However given the speed of my thoughts, one thing is for sure; I will need to make quite a few trips to the grocery store to put vegetables on the dinner table.   For home-grown vegetables to even be a possibility; the veggies will first have to participate in the ‘Survivors’ show being played out live in my backyard.   Tune in, 24/7, nature’s first reality show!