Hither and yon

One British gardening expert says television "gardening makeover" shows (of the 1/2 hour variety usually) create absolutely dreadful messes and "give gardening a bad name."

Could you really live with the results of most of their ideas? A bit of Zen here; a bit of suburban Humphrey Repton there. Gertrude Jekyll, Capability Brown and Andy Warhol thrown in for instant effect ... The people who make those wall-to-wall programmes are pleasant, talented, generous with their advice and sincerely trying to introduce us to new ideas. But what doesn't come easily to them is an acceptance of the real tradition of gardening.

The television gardeners' retort is fairly predictable. Such charges stink of elitism: There is nothing wrong with trying to get people interested in gardening by different means. You can't be snobbish about gardening.

Working within traditions equals snobbery, as everyone is no doubt aware. What we do can't be expensive and 99% of the people we design for think that the end result is brilliant. So what? That's like saying supermarket tabloids get people interested in reading and thus promote literacy. Yes, but...

And how about this one: We have misunderstood Judas Iscariot. Don't listen to Dante, because JI was a hellava guy. I'm not saying Judas is a saint, but we owe him an enormous debt for having helped Jesus to accomplish God's will. My oh my. I suppose we also must "give the Devil his due" because without him (using the law of opposites) there would be no such thing as good.

Suppose your boyfriend wants to go on vacation, yet your parents' disapprove of him. You do not want to disappoint either of them. What do you do? It's obvious isn't it? When your perspective and mental horizons are as big as your fingernails, you do this.