I am suffering from a poison ivy allergic reaction right now. It has been very bad for a week already. I have been applying many creams with menthol, camphor and other anesthetics. I have been taking steroid based medicine. But the poison ivy has its way to the end. It’s been a week and no improvement yet. My arms, neck, face, even eyes are swollen (I can barely see) and painfully itchy. No modern medicine can do anything about it. Nature still demands respect, once in a while and we should not forget it. I was reminded this way. I wanted to shape my garden to a mental image I had created, tearing off, cutting branches and vines without much consideration. Maybe I should not have interfered. Why do we need to change nature? It is beautiful the way it is. Why do we need to pull out the weeds? Why make the pretty dandelions suffer? I am starting to question. Weeds are easy to grow and we cannot otherwise control them. And we are humans, after all. We need to control out environment, everything.
Interestingly enough, poison ivy doesn’t affect other animals. Just people. It knows its enemies.
I wished we could let the plants be. Just be. They can make us so happy. Look at the poison ivy. Isn’t it glorious?
Somehow, in a way, I am not blaming the ivy for my suffering. I accept it as punishment for feeling like such a superior being, in charge of the world around her. Although, I do not think that I am going to let the poisonous plant hang around my yard forever (I am afraid for my daughter), I am surely going to treat it with much more respect from now on (she said scratching her left hand to blood).
And, yes, the harmless weeds are welcome all over the place. Who on Earth really needs a lawn?
