The Gardener: Good morning. How are you?
The Tenant: Awful. You?
G: I'm very well. I've been having a lovely day in my garden.
T: Your garden? How can you have a lovely day in a garden? Gardens are terrible places.
G: Mine isn't. Vegetables. Fruit. Lawns. Rhododendrons. Flowers. Topiary. It's glorious. Heavenly, almost.
T: You must be very lucky. Mine is full of fallen trees, wasps' nests; I can't even penetrate some parts, so thick is the undergrowth; there's broken glass stuck in the soil, so I hurt my feet when I walk in it. If truth be told, it's, well, hell on earth.
G: Mine used to be like that.
T: Well, you're lucky it's not like that now.
G: Not luck, work. You see, I found this book, Gardening For Beginners. It was written a long time ago, but it's very good. It tells you how to clear land and then construct a beautiful garden. Here, look at the pictures.
T: How old-fashioned! I don't trust those drawings. Looks like a children's book of fairy tales to me. I'm something of a modernist myself. I have a scientific bent. I trust evidence. I had some people in to measure the fallen trees and estimate their weight. It's very interesting. They weigh thirteen tons! We've also discovered by forensic analysis precisely where the lightning struck some of the trees and the wind direction of the wind that blew others of them down. It's amazing what science has discovered. That's progress for you! So, who is your gardening book by? A horticulturalist? A botanist?
G: Funnily enough, no, a would-be gardener, who became frustrated with the inhospitable wilderness of their land, asked some of the older people in the village what to do, followed their instructions, and then wrote about it, to help others in the same predicament.
T: I'm glad we live in an age where we have professionals and experts, systems and structures to understand and manage the world. We don't have to rely on oral 'wisdom', folktales passed down by toothless idiots. I am very lucky myself with what I've found.
G: What have you found?
T: Well, I go to a support group for people with wasp stings. It really helps to find I'm not the only one covered in red, painful swellings. And my doctor gives me something to help reduce the pain. It makes me groggy, and has some other side effects, but that's a price I'm happy to pay. It means I can sit nearer the window, where it's lighter, even though the the wasps tend to congregate more there, and it matters much less when I'm stung.
G: Wouldn't you rather get rid of the wasps? Remove the fallen trees? Cut back the undergrowth? Dig out the broken glass? Plant the garden? Spend time out in it, in the sunshine itself? Eat its vegetables and fruit? Bask?
T: What a lot of nonsense. Talk of such gardens is an old wives' tale. Those bucolic idylls are very attractive rococo fantasies, I'm sure, but have little to do with contemporary reality. In primitive times, before science found ways to help us, people made up myths to comfort themselves. Talk of heavens, of panaceas, of utopias. We've advanced beyond that. Anyway, why should I work on the garden myself? Haven't I suffered enough? Should I not respect, even honour the garden as it it, as God created it (I'm a deist, you know)? Why should I compound my suffering by artificially imposing an unattainable goal of perfection, then beating myself up for never reaching it? Surely the right way forward is acceptance: it is the answer to all of my problems, and I need to accept reality as it is rather than fighting it. I need to stop 'shoulding' on myself. That's the only way I've been able to achieve peace. That's the only way to recover: slowly, letting time take time.
G: But are you recovering? Have you achieved peace?
T: I'm more at peace with myself now I have stopped blaming myself for the fallen trees, the glass, the wasps' nests. There's that old fable about the original fault lying somehow with us, that we're responsible for the lamentable, parlous states of our gardens. That's simply a way they tried to control people to maintain their own power, by making people feel guilty, making them feel bad about themselves. Don't blame the victim, I say. I'm not to blame. It's nature, acting through storms and pests, and the vandals. The vandals who broke into the garden, got drunk, and bashed things up. It wasn't always like this, you know. They smashed their bottles on the broken tree trunks, and that's why there's glass everywhere.
G: It wasn't always like this? You mean there was a beautiful garden, once?
T: I do have a few memories, from very early childhood, of happy moments. I remember the trees standing tall, lawns, dahlias nodding in the breeze, the hum of insects. But that was before the storms, before the vandals.
G: When did the storms happen? When did the vandals break in?
T: Well, storms recur. In fact we're due one this weekend. There are some very ailing trees I'm frightened are going to come down. And the vandals, long ago, broke the fence, and other vandals have been coming in through the gap ever since.
G: Do you not think of strengthening the ailing trees, cutting away dead or diseased branches at risk of falling, mending the fences?
T: It's too late. What's done is done. You can't change the past or pretend it is not there. That's a particularly unhelpful form of denial.
G: Would you like to have a beautiful garden? Would you like a different reality?
T: The fallen trees are what is real. The wasps are what is real. Are you suggesting I deny reality?
G: Not deny. See then alter what you see.
T: What do you mean alter? When I've been stung by a wasp, that's the reality I'm facing. I can't unsting myself. You do talk rot.
G: You cannot remove the stings. But all stings fade if you don't scratch them. What you can do is remove the wasps. You can remove the glass. You can remove the fallen trees. You can then begin again.
T: But the wasps, the glass, the fallen trees, they're part of the garden. They're the very fabric, they exist in the very tissues of the garden, they're part of my identity, they're part of who I am now. Are you trying to deny who I am? Are we all supposed to become the same, little identikit copies of some implausible, Pollanna-ish phantasm of a make-believe world? The trees, the glass, the wasps: they're real, and they're what make me human. They are the garden.
G: They're not the garden. They're in the garden. What's in can be taken out. What's out can be put in. What exists can be transformed. What doesn't exist can be brought into existence. It's your garden. The garden you see is the result of your decisions and your actions. You're not the result of the garden. The garden cannot decide or act. It has no lord but you. The question is who your lord is. You're forgetting the Landlord.
T: Don't talk to me about the Landlord! He's behind all of this, you know. You'd think he would have done something about this, if He as all-powerful and all-caring as He protests!
G: Have you asked Him for help to do the work?
[Long pause.]
T: Are you suggesting there's an instant fix to all of this? Wave a magic wand, and, ta-da, everything is fixed?
G: Not instant. But you'd be amazed at how quickly the heavy work of clearing the debris and the undergrowth can be done if you rope in some friends to help. What is broken can be mended. What is fractured can be made whole. You can make sculptures of the glass. You can dig ponds, and the dragonflies will eat the wasps. You can plant and wait. The trees can be cut up for garden furniture, and you can invite people to sit with you in the garden, and you can explain to them how you recovered your inheritance. Best of all, the landlord can help you.
T: How can I trust you're telling the truth?
G: Look at my garden.
[A period of silent observation and contemplation.]
T: And can you help me read and do what's set out in the book?
G: I can.
T: And do you have a copy of the book for me?
G: I do. Here it is.