Even in an ordinary English garden, the clean lines of winter please the eye and rest the soul. This Christmas, it’s time to appreciate the inestimable value of the gift found just outside our front doors
The rich diversity of the world around us, from the smallest insect to the music of the stars, is from the perspective of the human race, a gift. For the purposes of this article, I don’t think it matters whether you think creation (even Darwin’s theory of evolution itself) must, in some way unfathomable to the human mind, issue from one who can only therefore be described as god or, if you happen to think that we are simply the recipients of a stupefying and lucky cosmic accident. In either case, the thing we can all agree on this Christmas, is that the wonder of the world around us is something we have done nothing to earn or deserve. It predates us; it is the ultimate free gift.
Even now, in the darkest midwinter, there is surprise and delight to be savoured in an ordinary English garden. With all the bursting colour and urgency of summer gone, the clean lines of winter please the eye and rest the soul. Trees silhouetted against inky skies. Our little avian friends scratching out their living, making the most of the untidy parts of our gardens. The earth is cold and hard, but we know it is only asleep and soon life will course back into our gardens and fields. Spring will come and life will cover our hills and valleys once more, so that next year there will be a harvest of good meat and wholesome bread. But what if one year the earth went to sleep, never to wake up again? How then would we feel in the midst of a bleak midwinter?
Continue reading...from Gardening blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2hkhY07
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