
It occurred to me a while ago that the reason the world is in such terrible shape right now, and so many awful things are happening all over the globe, is that I haven't been tending very well to my garden.
I am only half kidding. Anyway, up above is a picture of my garden ("Chaos Garden") as it was a couple of weeks ago, after over a year of abject neglect. What was actually very cool about it though, was that some of the things I had planted there a couple of years ago, would keep growing back. You can't see my 7' tall Australian Spinach plants here, or my Jurassic Collard bushes, but these pale purple flowers are my 2nd or 3rd generation daikon. It's been fun going out there and discovering what has decided to grow on its own.

But however delightful Chaos Garden has been, it was time to clear it out and start planting some things properly. So that's what I've been doing over the past few weeks. I started my seedlings several weeks ago, hired some wonderful hard-working gentlemen to clear out Chaos Garden, and have started planting some of the hardier seedlings there.
As an aside - and maybe this will be the political part of this post - I'm not going to post either the names or photos of the wonderful gentlemen who helped me with my garden. The reason for this is that they come from a different country, and I don't know what their immigration status is, and I wouldn't want to get them into any kind of trouble.
I'm not going to make this a post about immigration policy - I'm only going to say this: Whatever your beliefs about state-enforced borders, one of the consequences of having those borders is what I am doing right now. I'm refraining from sharing happy information about someone, letting someone show off their hard work and accomplishment (wait till you see the photos of our front yard!) on my blog. I'm doing that out of fear for the safety of the people who helped me. And that is one of the effects of this kind of law: Fear. We become just a little more fearful that someone might get in trouble, a little more careful in what we say publicly, or even among friends. We become just a tiny bit more guarded, less trusting.
If you've spent any time at all in a totalitarian regime (I have), then you will know that one of the most striking features of society in that kind of world is the lack of trust between people. The kind of government we live under, and the kinds of laws, can have a very big impact on what our society looks and feels like. You may support state borders and strict border enforcement. You may think deporting people away from the country they've lived in for decades, because they haven't jumped through the proper hoops, is legitimate and even good. But you cannot deny that it also has this effect: It adds just a little bit more fear to, and subtracts just a little bit of trust from, the society we live in.
So here's the front yard. It's just the first phase - I've now got to find some French Lavender, and a few other things to fill it out. Also some paving stones. But I think it's a good start. It's a Mexican lime tree in the middle of the circle, BTW. So if you're ever in the neighborhood and get a hankering for some Tequila, you know what to do.
Courtesy of the Unknown Gardener:
