In my very anthropomorphic view, I swear I could hear the wisteria crying as we trimmed away two decades of sinewed vines that had clung to the porch we had to rebuild this April. Offering shelter to man and animal alike, its towering verdancy would bloom every year on my birthday.

Not this year. It lay dormant, still, speechless as the workmen slammed nails into wood and called it a terrace.

I’m not the begrudging type, but I am often shell-shocked when Husband runs through the garden with his clipping shears, trimming away what he deems to be stray natural material that “shouldn’t be there”. In his quiet way he secretly drew pleasure recently out of hacking away one-fourth of the hedge that borders our neighbor’s place, the folks who only ever talk to us when it is time to revisit said hedge.

So you see I have a history of garden remorse. When it came to my beloved wisteria, I wept with it, thinking it would never grow again. I knew the wisteria had to be trimmed back dramatically. It just made me sad to think it would die because of us.

How wrong I was!

If you want to make Nature laugh, try taming it. While we human beings want things yesterday, now or at the very least, really, really soon, Nature sits patiently, growing day by day without comment. It simply is. It does not try to control the future, but lives only in the now. And it rewards those of us who are patient enough to notice its resilience.

Okay, I’m feeling a little more humble now in the face of such magnificence. How about you?