When I finally reached the garden, for it was far away, the man was gone, as were his cart and all of his retched tools of grotesque demolition. And so was my garden; it’s flowers and trees and shrubs and fruits and dirt and insects, all of what made it perfect and unique seemingly gone. In the place of all of it’s glorious wonders were only scorched earth and ashes. My beautiful garden was dead and gone and with me never knowing the serenity of silence within it’s borders, the sweetness of a ripened fruit, the fragrance of one of my garden’s flowers. All of this was lost, and my only knowledge of her magnificence gained from the other side of a nearly impassable barrier.

            I went to the center of my garden and wept, for I loved it so yet it never felt my touch or heard my whisper. It began to rain as I wept and continued through the night, and even dead and destroyed and stripped of all it once held I still loved my garden. For without all of the visible physical splendor, was this not still my garden. The same garden I loved for so very long without ever tasting its splendor. I still saw it’s beauty, the beauty of it’s potential and of what it once was, of her memory. I sat through the night and through the rain until the morning dawned, desperately remembering every feature of what once lay within and bursting with love of what she is now, for even ruined I loved her. And then I saw, bursting from the earth, a sprout, and near that another, and around those another and hundreds more near those. In his haste to destroy my garden’s loveliness the man had knocked loose onto the earth the seeds of everything she once contained. He had sown the seeds of the glorious rebirth of my garden, and she was to be no one’s, not even mine, for I learned then that her type of beauty is eternal and limitless. But I knew that she would let me love her as she grew, and rest easy knowing that I would never dream of changing her, nor would I let another. And so I waited there and I smiled and laughed because I was finally in my beautiful garden, and because my garden would soon grow back. My garden is resilient and powerful and amazing and no man can destroy or contain or control her, he may only love her for what she is… the beauty of nature.