Gardens and Control

Gardens are curious affairs. We speak of growing vegetables, but, in fact, vegetables grow themselves. Indeed, it is the vegetables that grow us. Gardens are, to write philosophically, a strange amalgam of control and spontaneity.  A wild garden, maintained for aesthetic reasons, requires limited control.  Spontaneity there is tolerated.  A productive food garden, in contrast, requires a surfeit of control. The task of the vegetable grower is to foster the conditions under which the edibles will grow.  And this, as often as not, requires the killing of creatures.