She was raised in a garden and taught to fear the weeds.
The thistle and the quackgrass. The dandelion and the nettle. The ragweed and the foxtail. These were the monsters that haunted her dreams, the enemies that threatened everything she held dear.
From her earliest days, she had been taught how to identify these unsanctioned forms of vegetation – and even more importantly, how to uproot every remnant of their existence. It wasn’t enough to cut them down or trample them underfoot. Such carelessness would simply invite them to grow back with even greater determination. Instead, she must act as an agent of total annihilation.
“You are the protector of this garden,” they told her. “Succeed, and it will remain pristine. Fail, and it will be overrun.”
It was a responsibility she carried out with great earnestness. Day after day, she rose early to make her rounds and search the terrain for even the most subtle signs of invasion: a sprout, a stem, anything that might endanger the integrity of the sacred ecosystem. She knew it would only take one lapse of discipline, one unattended weed, and soon these carefully manicured grounds would succumb to botanical anarchy. Such negligence was impermissible.
To her, the rules that guided her work brought certainty and comfort. Outside the garden, there was chaos. Strange plants grew in strange ways, producing all manner of thorns and briars and poisonous leaves. But here, she found security in knowing that each verdant row, systematically designed by gardeners who came long before her, had been faithfully preserved throughout the generations to allow only the few chosen plants prescribed by the Garden’s Original Designer.
In this world, there was good, and there was bad. There was approved, and there was forbidden. There was flower, and there was weed. A sharp line separated garden from jungle, and she was determined to stay on the right side of it.
Interlude, Part I:
What is it about the human psyche that makes us so restless? Where does it come from – this longing to go where we have not been, to seek what we have not found, to discover what we have not known?
From our earliest days, we move about the world as intrepid adventurers, pushing the boundaries that attempt to keep us hemmed in. Our childhoods betray an obsession with exploration: What if I crawled up these stairs? What if I pushed on this door? What if I drew on this wall? What if I tasted this dirt?
Some of us grow up and learn to subdue this investigative impulse through dogmatic certainty and raw authoritarianism. Others simply succumb to apathy and the curse of perpetual distraction.
But no matter how we might silence our questions and subdue our curiosity, somewhere deep within the corners of our souls, we can still hear the haunting whispers prompting us to wonder what might lie beyond the limits of what we think we know.
One quiet morning late in the spring, as she tracked through the dew for her daily inspections, she stumbled across a tiny plant tucked suspiciously behind a rock near the garden’s edge. Had she missed it during yesterday’s surveillance? Or had it sprung up overnight? Either way, she knew what must be done. Instinctively, she pulled out her trowel and knelt to extract this unwelcome guest, as she had with so many just like it in the past.
Yet just before she could plunge the blade into the soil, her eye caught sight of something entirely unexpected: a petite bud perched at the end of the delicate stem.
In all her years of tending this garden, she had never seen anything quite like it. Weren’t weeds supposed to be worthless and grotesque and frightening? Wasn’t it their sole mission to visit death upon the garden, choking out the plants that truly belonged?
This bud gave no hint of such evil intentions. Instead, it appeared as an unassuming little sphere of vulnerability. Hardly bigger than the head of a pin, its petals were tightly wrapped together, as if clinging to something precious within. Just below the surface, she could detect the faintest hint of vibrancy and color, waiting to burst forth at exactly the right time.
The plant’s elegance surprised her. And confused her. And scared her. But most of all, it intrigued her. What unseen mysteries might this little bud be concealing?
For the first time in her life, she felt a conflict between duty and desire. The old familiar rules demanded that she rip this seedling out by its roots. This much she knew. But what if – she shuddered at the thought – what if the rules were wrong about this particular plant? Or at the very least, what if the rules were incomplete? She had never dared to ask such things before, but what if this fragile flower wasn’t actually the villain she had been told to believe it was?
Surely it wouldn’t hurt to give it one more day. If she came back tomorrow and saw that it had morphed into some heinous monstrosity, she would waste no time in bringing its life to a swift and resolute end. But if she came back and saw that it had retained its latent beauty – well, she wasn’t quite sure what she would do. She’d have to cross that bridge when she got there.
And so she stood up, brushed the dirt off her knees, and slowly walked away.
Behind her, the strange leaves basked in the morning sunshine, the foreign roots remained anchored securely to the soil.
Interlude, Part II:
Why are we so terrified of changing our minds? The entire history of human thought is one long, never-ending cycle of people trading in their dumb ideas for slightly less dumb ideas that temporarily satisfy them until new information becomes available. And yet for some reason, we think it’s heretical to concede that we don’t have it all figured out. Why is that?
Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to admit that we live in a perpetual state of discovery? To acknowledge that some of the things we believe to be true might actually be true, while others, maybe not so much? Why should it be a scandal for an earnest soul to retrace their steps every once in a while and try a different path?
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a sign of weakness to question the narratives that no longer hold up. After all, the earth is no longer flat. Lead is no longer in paint. Lobotomies are no longer trustworthy forms of mental health treatment.
Must change always be an empty pursuit of the fleeting and the novel? Or are there times when change is the most honest thing we can do?
The garden’s transformation didn’t happen overnight. It was a process measured by months and seasons and years. But after watching that first forbidden plant grow and bloom, she immediately knew that things could never be the same. Such stunning brilliance could not simply be ignored. Never again could she blindly rip such a thing out of the ground.
At first, the changes were imperceptible to the outside observer. A flower here. A fern there. A peculiar little vine that seemed to be in no hurry to get wherever it was going. Little by little, new plants slowly found their way into the garden, carrying out a methodical and silent migration.
In the process, the garden’s appearance began to shift more and more noticeably. The perfect rows that she had once cultivated with painstaking care began to lose their sharpness. Spaces that had once remained sparse and uninhabited began to fill with saplings and grasses and shrubs, the colors of which the garden had never seen. She even noticed the arrival of unfamiliar birds that fluttered among the branches and filled the air with their songs.
Some of the old plants continued to thrive in the midst of this transformation, proving themselves to be hearty and resilient, unaffected by the metamorphosis taking place around them. She was happy to see them stick around.
Others, however, quickly withered in the presence of their new neighbors. Their leaves turned brown; their stems began to sag. It was as if they had been designed with no capacity to tolerate company. All along, their only hope of continued survival had depended upon her own ruthless removal of all competition for resources.
There were moments when she found herself longing for the simplicity of the old garden. She missed that world of rules and order where she could feel a firm sense of control. No questions, no gray areas, no reasons to confront the limits of what she did not know.
But what the garden had lost in artificial neatness, it gained in raw vitality. With each passing season, new layers of beauty emerged. A more primal and complex beauty. A beauty marked by wildness that defied description and transcended categorization. The old garden had felt like a museum to the past; this new version teemed with possibility.
In a word, her garden was alive.
Interlude, Part III:
What if somewhere along the way, we managed to miss the point completely? What if we allowed our most sacred impulses to be suffocated by the futile pursuit of power, certainty, and gratuitous self-importance? Isn’t it at least possible?
Surely we could dare to imagine a scenario in which we’re not here merely to enforce rules and draw lines. In which ancient books don’t have all the answers. In which the mystery of human existence can’t be reduced to securing a ticket on the first train out of town right before it all goes up in a big ball of fire and brimstone.
And if we can imagine that, couldn’t we also imagine an alternative reality that could bring about greater harmony and love than anything our feeble dogmas could possibly manufacture? A reality where belonging transcends belief, where virtue transcends violence, where justice transcends judgment?
Wouldn’t that be a better world for everyone? Wouldn’t that be worth the messiness that comes with change?
The years eventually caught up to her. Her daily walks among the flowers grew shorter and shorter, until eventually they stopped altogether. Her eyesight slowly diminished, limiting her ability to see the colors that she had grown to love. Even her hands grew stiff, making it difficult to work the soil or pick fresh berries from the young bush she had only recently discovered along the fencerow.
She knew her time in the garden was coming to an end, and she accepted the inevitable reality that so many gardeners before her had already faced. She was never meant to stay here forever.
One evening, as the summer sun sank low in the sky, she sat down beneath the old oak tree that had been at the center of the garden for longer than anyone could remember. Her back rested against its weathered bark as the last of the evening rays warmed her face. Her hands were folded on her lap.
Through weary eyes she slowly scanned the garden she would soon be leaving behind. It looked nothing like the one she had inherited, nothing like the one she had grown up in. Many of the plants she used to protect had long since died, and many of the ones she used to eradicate had long since moved in and taken up undisturbed residence.
Yet she couldn’t help but feel a sense of gratitude for what this garden had become.
The old one had served its purpose for a time. She was glad to have been a part of it. But this was a garden that did not depend on her. A garden that was strong and vibrant, unique and free. Here, roots grew deep, leaves grew wide, and the surprises never stopped coming. Here, she didn’t have a project to maintain; she had a place to call home.
She closed her eyes and listened to the breeze. The air turned cool as the sun slipped behind the horizon.
She imagined her ancestors out there somewhere, looking down at her in disappointment for the duty she had neglected, the responsibility she had left behind. But their faces soon faded as she imagined her children – and their children – enjoying this oasis of wild beauty for many years to come.
All because one courageous wildflower had poked its head above the soil – and one courageous gardener had let it stick around.
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Drew Thomas Humphrey 