A garden is an excellent aid to reflection and philosophia. No wonder contemplative orders have always cultivated gardens.
I gaze endlessly at the unfolding spectacle of my banana plants, for instance. They remind me of the traditional Swedish paintings of the different ‘stages of man’, depicted like a staircase at first ascending with the youthful phases of life, then descending with maturity and old age. The top of the banana plants present the same progression from the formative stages when the leaves are rolled up, then they unfurl themselves before finally fraying, and eventually turning brown and dropping off. But by the trunk there are already small shoots to continue the next generation. I find a leaf which represents me- a little frayed at the edges…
Such are the gardener’s banal reflections (banane reflections ? ) on the eternal progress of life and tempus fugit...