The Garden

As the rainy season quickly approaches our sunny little village of Heiwa-cho, I have found myself spending spare moments in the garden. Don't stop reading because you fear that I will bore you with the trivial details of my toils in the soil. I won't. Instead, I will bore you with some reflections on the philosophical side of horticulture. Farmers have long held a place among the romanticized and admired professions in Western culture. Perhaps our shift from agriculture to manufacturing has left us longing for the life of our forefathers. They never needed a watch to tell them when to go to work or when they could call it a day. An endless hedgerow stood where cubicles now confine. Even for those millions of people who have never spent time farming, there is something in their blood that tells them it is better to be outside than in, and I dare say I have never heard anyone praise the taste of canned vegetables over that of fresh ones. Something calls us to it. Thomas Jefferson went so far as to imply divinity was behind this yearning when he noted that "Farmers are the chosen people of God if ever he had a chosen people". (Apologies to my Jewish friends, but try to focus on the point.) Maybe he was onto something. After all, God made Adam out of dirt. During the late 1700's, a group of French philosophers, known as the Physiocrats, rationalized that agricultural production was the only real measure of wealth. This was based on the idea that manufacturing required one to strip the planet of resources in order to transform them into another product but, to the contrary, agriculture consisted of nurturing the earth and actually growing something naturally (no input other than the natural elements and a bit of sweat). While I won't delve into an economic diatribe based on Physiocratic ideology, I will agree on the point that there is something inherently primal and wholesome in cultivating the earth into producing life. Of course, I do not mean to count myself among the noble farmers. I am merely a gardener, and a poor one at that, but this is all beside the point.
I am a gardener because I have a little dirt around my house, and I have taken advantage of the opportunity to play in it. But maybe the idea of "playing" in it sells short what it really is...a small attempt to cling to that age-old calling. In a time too many centuries past to recall, all the people of this world farmed for subsistence. Over the years their numbers have dwindled. People started farming for money. Then corporations started farming for money and there was nothing left for the family farmer. Today, most people wanting to retain some connection with the soil just garden, I guess. Some people grow food in their gardens, not so much out of necessity anymore, but just because they can. I don't even do that. No, I'm a flower man, myself. Is that the kind of person Jefferson referred to? A far cry from it. Is that what the Physiocrats had in mind regarding wealth? Probably not. But still I dig.
It is a mind-relaxing and body-exhausting hobby, but at the end of the day it feels great. Sometimes I try to imagine what my grandfather must have felt like when he was a boy picking cotton under that unbearable Georgia sun. My few hours in the garden will never give me even a glimpse of that, I suppose. Maybe I am reaching out to that very first ancestor...the old clump of clay that gave rise to Adam. Or maybe I just like all the pretty flowers. Its ok. I'm man enough to admit it.