Sex and gardening

Our garden has weathered harsh winters, icy patches, freezing fog, drought, heatwaves, flood, disease, pernicious pests and persistent weeds.

Now, in summer approaching autumn, it's in full fling, with exuberant foliage and flowering plants, some planned, some blown in on the wind, loads of fruit, and some unexpected wildlife. Some hoped-for plants have died but the gaps have been filled, and some experiments have failed and been quietly put down to experience.

To uncritical gardeners, the garden is a success, the product of sun, wind, rain, blood, sweat, toil and a lot of labouring to understand what will thrive in this particular soil and what to give up on.

To the perfectionist or the professional designer, it's a disaster: unplanned and chaotic, with violent clashes in the planting scheme, failure to balance the various elements, fuzzy boundaries, lack of variety and a surfeit of overblown raspberries - generally, a garden that should have been handed over to the next generation of experts a long time ago.

Very similar to a young person's view of their parents' sexuality really.

Or the media view of long-term faithful marital relationships.

Or society's view of the sex life of the elderly, the disabled or anyone less than perfectly symmetrical.

(Note: comments on this blog are welcome, but obscenities and Latin plant names will be deleted)