Morning is a time for light and shadow in my garden.
As mysterious as the garden is at night, it is at its best as a creature of the day. Especially the morning.
I am a creature of both. I prowl until 2 in the morning and then get up around 7. The candle quickly grows short with that schedule.
The garden knows nothing of such behavior. It merely is.
In our more sentimental moods, humans like to project our own Jekyll and Hyde concepts on nature. It makes us feel liberal and benevolent. Especially when we side with the prey over the predator.
And the dark does hold dangerous predators -- of all sizes. Violence. Sin. Creatures die with terrible shrieks in the loneliness of the night.
But the light is filled with butterflies. Hummingbirds. Enticed by nectared flowers that appeal equally to human and beast.
Eden. Manichaeism come to life in my back yard.
But that is how children think about life. And that is rank reductionism.
It is easy to get stuck in that Weltanschauung with the cow's breath summer breeze cooling me in my hammock. It is all there. The sun. The birds. The flowers.
It is always good to remember, though, that just as certain as there will be another Adam Sandler movie, every Eden has a serpent.
This morning (or yesterday in blog saving time), I watched one of the little garden lizards zag through the purple queen in search of some unwary insect. The lizards pay me little heed. Probably because my movements seem glacial to them.
That was probably its undoing. Lizards are rather low on the food chain. And this fellow discovered that to his cost.
In a rush of feathers, a bird was on him. A false catch. Another strike. A couple of tosses in the air, and it was over. The predator escaped with the prey.
The victor? A male house sparrow. It was almost as incongruous as Don Knotts wrestling an anaconda.
But the sparrow was as effective a predator as any leopard. And the lizard was just as dead as any taken gazelle.
The garden is free of good and evil. Amorality reigns.
We humans are the moral agents. It is our actions that require the choice of doing good or evil.
And the best I can do, as Voltaire advised, is not to rest, but to cultivate my garden -- and let it grow.
