The Last Gardner

Twenty years ago jokes about programming the VCR abounded. If you could figure out how to do that you had pretty much conquered new technology. I’ve noticed we don’t laugh about stuff like that anymore. For some it’s probably because doing things like programming a VCR has become as second nature as buttering toast. For others it’s because the never ending line of new gadgets and upgrades has robbed them of their sense of humour.

I am still hanging onto my humour – but just barely. However, I’m afraid I have lost my sense of wide eyed wonder at what we can do with a few buttons and a screen. What never grows old for me is the ancient magic of a seed. No matter how many times I drop those hard little specks into the dirt, I never get over the marvel of seeing them morph into little green plants.

I love a lot of things about gardening, but perhaps what I appreciate most of all is how the technology behind it never changes. Dig up some dirt, stick in the seeds, water, weed and repeat. The organic methods of achieving success in the garden are the same today as they were a century ago. They’re the same today as they will be a century from now.

If it weren’t just a myth and if Walt Disney really had been frozen and buried beneath The Pirates of the Caribbean ride he would be brought back to a life filled with bewildering technology. If he were thawed out today he would have to figure out things like cell phones, mp3’s, laptops, ATM’s, automatic paper towel dispensers and keyless cars to name just a few. Given that Walt Disney loved animation and robotics he would probably be thrilled with some of the advances, and want to learn all about them. However, there’s also a good chance that he might spend whatever extra time cryogenics had given him in such dull endeavours as figuring out how to work the TV remote or gain entry to his vehicle. He could end up so exasperated he would never ask to be frozen again. Not that he ever did.

Not so with gardeners! Whenever you unthawed a gardener a seed would still be a seed and soil would still be soil. They could spend their remaining years sowing and reaping with no need of reprogramming or updates. Oh sure, maybe they’d have a few mild freak outs over things like hovercrafts buzzing overhead or seed catalogues delivered by hologram. And they would still have to figure out how to program the latest coffee pot and turn on their new stove, but out in the garden the basics wouldn’t be any different.

Unless . . . oh, a terrible thought occurs! What if gardens in the future are being run by robots? What if people got so burned out from that whole “growing your own food” fad back in the early 2000’s that they turned over their trowels to robotic gardeners at the first opportunity and never looked back?

I have visions of freshly thawed gardeners doing combat with robots between the rows of spuds. I can see them wrestling for trowels and clobbering poor little R2-D2 on his domed little head with a hoe while C-3PO looks on in horror. Not sure why the Star War droids would be gardening, but there you have it.
It could be the basis of an epic film – The World’s Last Gardener. A soil stirring tale of how one freshly defrosted gardener reclaims a plot of land and returns an ancient practice back into the hands of humans. They could even thaw out George Lucas to direct it – provided he had been frozen in the first place, of course.

However, if they’ve managed to invent a little robot similar to one of those iRobot vacuum cleaners that scours about the garden rooting out quack grass and dandelions, well, I might be tempted to keep one of those. But he doesn’t get to plant any seeds or pull out any of the annual weeds, or design the garden – that part gets left to me.

But right now it’s the 2010 garden I am waiting for. A garden that is still as frozen as any cryogenic person could be.