Nature Always Wins

Brian Jenkins is what you might describe as “garden proud”. Every weekend, weather permitting, he can be found outside waging war on nature, beating it into manicured, controlled submission. His garden is a thing of regulated beauty; edges cut to crisp perfection where the lawn borders deep rich beds of carefully curated flowers and ornamental plants, grass kept scrupulously short, although not too short, hedges and bushes subjected to a ruthless routine of pruning and shaping - stopping short of topiary, which he considers to be vulgar - so that one would be hard pressed to find a single stray shoot marring their perfect outlines.

Everything is planned, everything regimented and exact - colour schemes, planting schedules, mowing days, kept in beautiful aesthetic harmony and balance. His absolute crowning glory though, his pride and joy, which he does not love more than his own children, no matter what Carol says in her more exasperated moments, is his lawn. It is a joy to behold, a joy that he carries deep within himself, knowing that he and he alone is its master. The stripes….oh the stripes! So even and regular that they look as though they were measured out. So straight they could have been cut along a ruler. So utterly perfect that sometimes he simply stands at the window and gazes at it, hands on hips, and sighs a deep sigh of satisfaction and contentment. Simply put, he loves it.

However. There is one thing that Brian does not love. One thing that in fact he hates with a deep and burning passion, that he wishes could be wiped from the face of the earth, doomed to extinction and consigned to the furthest reaches of human memory where it could slip away into the place where all forgotten things must go. Dandelions. He cannot stand them, and he feels sure for some reason that they have a personal vendetta against him, that somehow they know how he feels and are determined to break him at all costs, although he knows that this is bordering on irrational, and irrational is not how anyone would describe him by any stretch. They seem entirely determined to defile his immaculate lawn and to destroy all of his hard work with their tawdry, common faces, and he has tried everything - everything - to eliminate them. He has mowed them - he knew that wouldn’t work, it was an emergency measure to remove evidence of them one day when he knew the neighbours would be coming by and hadn’t had time to properly deal with them - he has pulled them out, dragging the obscenely long roots out like some vile alien tendrils worming their way to parasitic dominion, he has sprayed countless products that give flashy promises of targeting the invaders and leaving the grass unharmed, cut and salted them, even once tried covering each one with a square of black polythene left over from some other project in a bid to deprive them of light and leave them to decay in the dark. That one lasted less than a day because he couldn’t stand the sight of the little squares like some sort of mocking chessboard advertising the fact that a weed was somehow outmaneuvering him.

Once, one of his kids (who are absolutely more important to him than his lawn) suggested that perhaps he could just leave them and let the whole thing become a “wildflower meadow” and that mowing was actually detrimental to the ecosystem and maybe he should consider planting a “pollinator paradise” instead that would attract bees and butterflies. Brian never voiced it, but he did fleetingly wonder if the child was actually his.

It has not escaped Brian’s notice the irony that he knows far more about the weed than most other people, simply by virtue of the fact that he has spent inordinate amounts of time researching how one might go about permanently removing them, and even this grates on him, as though they are conspiring to infiltrate his mind as well as his garden, spreading knowledge of themselves just as they spread their physical selves, their hateful little seeds dispersing through the atmosphere to take root everywhere. He even goes as far as banning the children from whispering their wishes and blowing the puffy little clocks to the winds for fear that they’ll find their way to his lawn and settle themselves in to renew his torment.

At least….this is how it all was. Before. “Before” sounds a bit dramatic, as if there was a clear delineation between then and now, how it was and how it is, and that’s not how it worked out at all. Of course now it’s being called “The Quiet Apocalypse” - the one that happened not with a rain of fireballs, not with nuclear war and the shattered remnants of humanity sheltering huddled in bunkers deep underground until they emerged, years later, blinking in the unrecognisable landscapes of the past, but slowly, quietly, unnoticeably. Of course in hindsight there were signs; everything that people were warned of for years, so much doom and gloom saturating the news that it almost became a global game of cry wolf - dire warnings with no consequences that anyone could see immediately and so it was all dismissed as scaremongering, as natural changes, as nothing to worry about, or just flat out denounced as lies. Of course now, everyone has always been against it, everyone always knew that the scientists and experts weren’t just whipping up hysteria for the sake of it, but now it’s too late. Everyone was looking in different directions whilst the world changed quietly in the background. Decisions made by world leaders designed to line the pockets of the elite led to consequences for the masses that no one noticed at first. Laws were changed, protections rolled back, entire species condemned to extinction for the sake of profit and power. Cities were bombed, infrastructure destroyed, global relations left in tatters in order to boost fragile egos and divert attention from abhorrent truths, and the collective rage and efforts of the world were aimed in the wrong direction.

Brian noticed it first when he was proudly showing someone a photo of his lawn in all its resplendent striped glory, lush and glossy and looking like the garden version of a shampoo advert. Something niggled at the back of his brain, something about the photo was off - like looking at a sepia tinted vintage photo where the colours aren’t quite right, only it was the other way around and it seemed as though the picture on the screen was oversaturated as if someone had been editing it to make it look like their life was better than reality. Brian barely even registered it as a full thought, but later on at home he took his phone out again and held it up next to the real lawn and felt a wave of disappointment that he had somehow managed to allow his standards slip to the point where the grass was looking nothing short of drab. No matter, it was nothing that a good watering programme and maybe some judicious feeding wouldn’t fix, and he’d just need to pay closer attention in the future. But then there was a hosepipe ban, although almost no one really adhered to it, and if it was ok for next door to wash their car then it was certainly acceptable to water the lawn. More acceptable, even, as isn’t a lawn a living thing and more important than the appearance of having a clean car?

And then it became harder to find fertilisers and lawn feed. Something to do with a far off war in a place that had been war torn for as long as Brian could remember, except now it seemed that it was affecting supply lines of fuel and other things. Prices rose and people had to tighten their metaphorical belts. Some people had to make choices between food and heat. Some people made the wrong choice. Mostly it was the sort of thing that affected someone else, someone from a different country or a different social class, until it wasn’t.

It seemed that the colour and joy slowly leached out of the world. Everything was just a little bit harder for everyone, except the few who were cashing in on the misery, and still the masses strove to be more like the few, refusing to accept that it was an unattainable goal. Death rates rose, birth rates fell. Campaigns were run to try to encourage people to have kids and of course there were voices who shouted against it, called it dystopia, asked if the world was now some sort of hellscape society, but it was easy to ignore them and dismiss them as radicals with wild ideas.

Brian’s lawn didn’t recover. The hosepipe bans eventually became water rationing, with the supply cut off at certain times so that people couldn’t cheat the system. Cars were left covered in dust. Everything seemed to be covered in dust. On the day when he saw a solitary bee and realised that couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one, Brian almost found himself wishing that he had listened to his kid and planted a wildflower pollinator meadow. There was less variety in the food on the shelves and what was there was more expensive and more people had to make choices. More people made the wrong ones.

When the data centre was built, it came with the promise of creating jobs, injecting the local economy with funds - and it did, for a while. But once it was built, there was no need to staff it and the jobs dried up, along with even more of the water, which now barely trickled out of the taps and was clogged with sediment. Cases of respiratory difficulties became more common and care harder to get, the healthcare system stripped as it was and sold off to the highest bidders who promised shorter waiting times and delivered nothing, but sat and rubbed their fat hands at their climbing bank balances like smug dragons. Carol and both kids had to get inhalers, and they stopped being free and then every time it seemed like they were more and more expensive. And always it seemed that things were affecting someone else worse, someone from a different part of the country or from the poorer parts of town. Until it wasn’t.

When Brian had to make a choice, he made the wrong one, and there wasn’t really any element of choice in it at all, and then he raged and railed and asked why hadn’t anyone done something about it, why hadn’t anyone noticed that all of these things were becoming a problem before they were actually a problem? But no one heard because everyone had a story like Brian’s and to those that didn’t, people like Brian were just someone else from a poorer place.

So now he keeps going, just like everyone else who is left. Water is still rationed but it is a bit easier now that it’s only him in the household. He’s used to going without now so there’s even a tiny bit to spare, and he thinks briefly of long ago when he would think nothing of leaving the sprinklers on overnight so that the lawn kept its vibrant green. Unbelievable that even grass couldn’t survive the new normal.

It is on a day that looks exactly like all the other days that stretch before and fade behind him, as he turns up the path to the house that a tiny flash of something…different catches his eye. Distracted, he turns towards the space that used to bring him such joy and he sees, jagged and jewel bright against the ocean of nothing, the unmistakable audacity of taraxacum, dent de lion, cankerwort, piss-a-bed - the names flow through his mind, learnt long ago before people stopped remembering things for themselves - and rage suffuses his body like a white hot wave, sudden and all-consuming. How dare this…this…arrogant, brash, useless weed survive where everything that was ever worth anything withered and died and disappeared from his life? Before he knows it, he’s on his knees beside the plant, grasping its leaves in his hands and he’s going to rip it out, to destroy it, to throw it away and erase the evidence that it ever dared to show face on his property, when he hears a quiet voice in his head. It sounds a lot like one of his children - who he misses more than he could ever attempt to put into words - asking him did he know that every part of a dandelion is edible, and isn’t that amazing? Did he know that they help to replenish depleted soil, and that they are nutritious and medicinal? He pauses. It’s been so long since he saw anything fresh and green. Slowly, he drops his hands to his lap. Slower still, he reaches out again and strokes one leaf with the tip of a finger. He stands and goes inside the house, closing the door with a click behind him. The next morning, on the way to work, he carries a tiny jar of water which he empties over the plant before stuffing the jar back in his pocket and marching away. On his way back into the house in the afternoon, he glances over to where the green glares against the grey before turning his head resolutely away.

That evening he forgoes his evening tea and instead hoards the water in a bigger jar. Somehow every day thereafter he finds himself saving a little water and emptying it on the insolent little thing every morning as he heads out. Somehow this becomes a habit that he maintains for months. And then, one morning when the chill that he has become accustomed to seems at last to be losing its bite, he is emptying the jar over its leaves when he stops, arrested by the sight of something new. He crouches beside the plant and…yes…there it is, a tightly curled green bud, fingers grasped around the treasure within and something inside his chest sparks and spreads warmth across the inside of his ribs. Over the next few days he watches it like a hawk, checking morning and evening and occasionally even finds himself thinking about it during the day, wondering when the moment will be that he catches sight of the golden globe of its relentlessly optimistic face amongst the ever present dirt and dust. When it finally comes, it is a weekend and Brian sits beside the radiant little orb for almost the whole day, unable to pull himself away from it, sucked into its gravity like a moon around a tiny sun, marvelling at how bright it seems and how delicate its petals. Once or twice he runs the tip of a finger lightly over it or bends his head to inhale the scent of it, subtle and soft, barely even noticing the creep of the hours passing by. Eventually he is brought back to himself by the cold of evening settling over him and reluctantly he stands, wincing at how his muscles have seized up from lack of use. He just barely resists the urge to whisper a goodnight to the flower, as that seems irrational and irrational is still not how anyone would describe him, but that night he goes to sleep with a lightness in him that he hasn’t felt in a long, long while.

He continues to lavish the little thing with attention as the days go by, feels a sharp pang of disappointment when the petals start to lose their radiance and fold in on themselves, but reminds himself that this isn’t the end but a beginning and continues to wait patiently.

On the day that he comes out of his front door to see that it has formed a perfectly spherical clock - because of course it is perfect, this is his dandelion and he has cared for it and nurtured it as best as he is able - Brian crouches down beside it, gently plucks the hollow stem and then, cupping his hand around it to shield it from any errant breezes, he stands and turns to face the ground outside the house. He blows four times - one each for Carol and the kids, and then one final puff and as the tiny sparks of the seeds float away, a murmured wish that they will find their homes beside his.