Garden of Hate

Danny was a young gardener who tended to his flowers, trees, and vegetables. He had inherited a plot with well chosen plants and labored to restore its flourishing, as well as cultivating new plants in the spring.

He soon found that creating the conditions for growth were not enough, and the special attention needed to promote desirable nature was nearly overwhelming.

Weeds opportunistically sought to establish a home among cultivated plants, trying to take advantage of the highly developed conditions intended for a productive garden. Here weeds could spread quickly, and battling these pests required weekly passes to rip them out.

Some had thorns and poison to dissuade unskilled removal, necessitating thick gloves and special effort to clear them at the root so the same ones would not return again next season and try to expand while going unnoticed.

It seemed like the weeds felt entitled to the same nutrients and soil meant for desirable plants that produced welcome flowers, fruits, or other gifts. You could imagine a politicians saying weeds too deserved their fair share of every garden since their chlorophyll was just as green.

Most puzzling were the strangler vines which naturally grew in a chaotic web resembling cancer. One variety began on the ground and sought tree branches upon which to ascend. They frequently forked and sought to choke branches to death and then merge with the remaining structure. They mimicked the coloration of their hosts and could blend in except for a few weeks in fall where they stayed green too long and could be easily detected as hostile intruders.

Another variety was a thorned strangler that began on the ground, wrapped around bushes and plants, grew several feet around and over them, and then anchored itself into the ground on the other side, using the leverage to grow tighter.

Common pokeweed stalks grew tall and looked innocuous, except for their plentiful summer berries that some animals took and spread, and served as a backup regeneration plan when the whole stalk was felled and not disposed of carefully.

Invasive bamboo could sense being cleared away and transformed from grass stalks into probing vines that searched tens of feet away for new safe spaces. Nothing healthy wants to die, no matter how wretched and parasitical.

The gardener was well educated, but could not figure out the purpose of these strange invading plants. They weren't helpful to his cultivation, yet since he knew there was no God, they must have a purpose in nature that he couldn't discern.

After another day of clearing weeds, thorns, and poisoned vines, he took a few sample clippings to farmer Joe who had many decades of experience with nature, as well as nuanced education four generations deep.

Danny told him, "I regularly see these strange guests, and no matter how much I remove them, others like them find their way back and try to set up home."

Farmer Joe shook his head. "They are endless. You can thoroughly remove them at the root and they'll be back in a month. You'll need to rigorously pull them out every season, and if you miss a year, they'll be firmly settled in."

Danny sought their function. "I know nature puts everything there for a reason, so surely there is some purpose they fulfill."

This grasp for purpose evoked laughter from Farmer Joe. "They're just pests looking out for themselves, aggressively claiming everything they can get. They depend on the growth of others so they can claim it to feed themselves. They contribute nothing while taking voraciously. If you left them on a vacant island, they'd grow to take up the whole space and then feast upon one another. They are vicious, stupid destroyers, thus you must destroy them before they destroy what is before them."

Shaken by the knowledge that some plants produce and others merely target productive plants, Danny realized he had to judge plants by their actions rather than treating them all as identical. This was at odds with what his Marxists professors had told him, and contrary to the instruction from the news readers on the screen who filled time between commercials for unhealthy products.

Eventually, he gave in to traditional gardening techniques, ruthlessly killing weeds, ripping thorns away, and having no mercy for poison and stranglers. He wanted the good plants to have a chance to grow unhindered and no longer tolerated senseless doctrine and phony morality from fools trying to teach false nature.