Gardens & Our Weapons of Mass Destruction

Since the loss of Eden, the majority have knocked themselves out in the quest of a protected environment to safeguard their desires to survive.  Best fix when society does not have a ready means of destruction, is to mass themselves into a huge batch of dwellings, protection becoming better as one moves towards the center, less as one journeys towards the edges.  Without fail, if a meat eater dares to cross over that threshold, we're just chub bate for the taking.

It's a given, if a person is placed in a cage with a bear, a cougar, and a weasel, that person isn't going to be eating any of them for dinner that day.  Words, swiftness of running, strength of crushing hands...these forms of defense pale in comparison to gnashing fangs, monstrous claws, racing-speed legs...plain and simple, we become dinner in short order.  There's really only one reason why man's at the top of the food chain...weapons.

Weapons of mass destruction in gardens are easily recognizable, and hard to ignore.  Rows upon rows, on shelf after shelf, they stare us squarely in the face when we make a trip to the garden centers at Home Depot or Lowe's. It's one of the reasons why species disappear out of the food chain altogether when society is involved.  We aren't even using these weapons to protect ourselves. We're using them because we just don't think the little guys are as important as us.

We disconnect from the idea that all life is tied together on one level or another, and that disengagement causes the fall of many species by our hands. Some disappearances are not noticed because...well...because they're tiny beings and small potatoes to us when we think our own problems in our own lives outweighs everything else.

Thinking that no matter what we do, nothing will change, we shortcut from what's right to what's fast and furious.  Of course, it's not really true, is it?  Things actually do change...just not as fast as this day and age demands.  Poisons kill all plants, insects and microbial matter.  Poisons kill the obnoxious along with the delightful.  No discrimination...even the instigator is at risk, directly or indirectly, when precautions haven't been set in place.

We should understand flowers and the process of pollination, whether by wind or insects. We ought to understand how food is actually created.  We need to put ourselves back in touch with the earth, the real earth before it's after-the-fact.

I walk out into the lushness of my gardens and see what isn't there anymore; what has vanished this year from years past.  Bees are few, wasps have dwindled, spicebush swallowtail caterpillars gone, gulf fritillary caterpillars almost zero, one frog in the pond instead of many, less birds...times are changing.

At the end of the day I'm just one grain of sand, insignificant in the eons of earth's existence; inconsequential in the realm of all gardens on this planet; yet my little fragment of paradise matters as long as I never give up.