A beautiful mess! That is how I describe my neighbor’s yard. He has never won the yard of the month award. I’m sure the city Fathers hate him. I’m sure they want to catch him gone and descend upon his yard with weed eaters! I, for one, appreciate unrestrained nature. It is so full of possibilities. Every time I walk by this yard, I discover a new composition of tangled vegetation. As an artist, I don’t need to tramp around the countryside like Van Gogh, looking for inspiration. There is a lifetime of such here in my neighbor’s front yard.
I have nothing against a manicured lawn. They exude a sense of control not found in unrestrained growth. I’ve always been uncomfortable with that feeling. I don’t know why. The vegetation in manicured lawns has had no choice. I don’t like that. The style assumes nature has nothing to say for itself. Van Gogh knew it had much to say. He spent his life recording it’s thoughts. If we were less deaf to it’s voice, we could hear those thoughts. My cats can hear them; but they would never think of trimming the tree.
Yards with the greatest manicure always win the awards. The yard judges assume my neighbor with the natural yard has had nothing to do with it. They discount the fact that he has decided to leave it alone and ignore his appreciation of nature’s intricacies. It’s for cutting they search. They are deaf to every noise except the whirl of a weed eater.
Summer is approaching and another yard competition is on its way. These competitions are important. My hopes are once again for the natural yard. There are other yards in town that have similar vegetative growth. But they differ; they lack thought. They are the result of neglect. Neglect is a pathological condition that humans impose upon nature– it is a failed attempt to improve. Of course every attempt to improve upon nature fails.
The thought that has gone into my neighbor’s yard may be hard for others to see but not for me. Among the growth, are a couple of flying saucer-looking structures that appear to be abstract sculptures. They fit well with the vegetation. They don’t appear as a man-made object that is being overrun by nature. They belong; they may have grown there. The vegetation, itself, betrays human thought. Looking closely, one sees what are commonly called weeds, but they grow congruently among more domesticated plants. The juxtaposition of domesticated and volunteer creates a kind of composition that highlights the beauty of the volunteer plants, commonly called weeds. One realizes the misnomer, evidence of a closed mind. The composition we see in this yard challenges that kind of mind.
If nature laughed, it would get the last one, here, but it doesn’t. The lack of laughter doesn’t mean nature has no sense of humor. Nature will never warn you that a joke has been told. I think nature assumes that if you have to be told, you wouldn’t get it anyway. I agree. In the yard competition, the winners are really the losers.. I rather like the idea of letting the losers win. Probably no one covets the first prize more than they. Probably no one has worked harder than they have. It’s the ultimate sarcasm. Some things in life can’t be understood any other way.