Gardening and philosophy of life

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,

Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,

Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air

The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,

As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,

Till the fiery star, which is its eye,

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,

The sweetest flower for scent that blows;

And all rare blossoms from every clime

Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 

from The Sensitive Plant by Percy B Shelley

Some of the most important things I have learned about life have been discovered in my garden. The first lesson you learn is how nature is full of contradictions, both literally

and metaphorically. At first you are surrounded by all this beauty and mystery, and then those senses are followed by the hard work and dangers, the losses you experience, some so quick you are shocked senseless. You begin to understand that while the world is very big, it is also very small, that one moment it is beautiful and the next moment it's the ugly monster. You try to comprehend that while you are a part of nature, it is totally apart from you. No one has written about this so well as Percy Shelley in his poem, The Sensitive Plant. The poem spells out all the beauty and love of a garden, then all the horrors of what a garden is, and then our feeble hopes as human beings in that garden. It is a poem about contradictions. I've come to understand one thing only, that sometimes I have no answers, no solutions, no theory.