The rain last week was much needed and made our garden very happy. It made the weeds even happier. It’s a fact of nature—at least in desert climate—that weeds make better use of water than garden plants. The seeds sleep invisibly beneath dirt and sand that seems barren until there’s some solid rain, and then—surprise!—little shoots appear everywhere. We think we’re creating a beautiful garden, realizing our personal sense of rightness: how things should be. We look over it all when the weather is dry and under control and feel we’re on the right track. What an accomplishment! We made something! Only the things we think should be there, the rest eradicated, or at least out of sight. A beautiful vision of life in our own image. (Not like that shithole yard down the street.)

Then the life-giving rain comes and we see how not in control we really are. How, with seemingly no effort at all, the hard work we’ve been doing for years has been thrown into chaos. Green life coming up everywhere! No sense of order or beauty, just wild abandon, opportunistically occupying every space imaginable. Creating seeds for the next generation before we can possibly stop it. We can fool ourselves for a bit while conditions allow, but there’s really no hope in the long term. When we set ourselves against nature, we’re destined to lose. The human vision of how-things-should-be is incomplete, and no match for the more complete vision of our creator.