Opposites Attract?

Opposites Attract?

      If someone told me, when I woke up that morning, I'd be watching an ad for a Chinese dance show over and over, and listening intently to the Chicago song “25 or 6 to 4”, I'd have said, “Yeah, could be. Why not?” I lead a quiet life, but it does get strange sometimes.

      To clarify, I was walking through a nearby mall and a kiosk was set up to run an ad for a Chinese dance/acrobat show, showing short clips of people jumping, thrusting with swords and throwing things in the air. Simultaneously, the mall muzak was playing the above mentioned song, which I like. The weird thing was: the phrasing and emphasis of the song were in exact sync with the video. I watched the tape run at least three times and the timing was precise. It was really neat to see, though the cultural basis of the two items were as different as [insert your own simile here]… And, yet they worked together.

      Married couples? Classic “opposites attract”. Not always for always, but sometimes for always.

      What could be more different than twisted hunks of metal and soft, growing plants? I just saw a picture of a fine garden in Delaware. A copper sculpture of a heron twisted elegantly upward before a set of soft Japanese Maple leaves. They do go together.

      Garden gnomes have been overdone, but a small statue of a smiling frog, in the lotus position, was great in a shady garden on a recent Azalea Convention tour.

The Neckel Garden in 2015 demonstrates how plants and human constructions can go well together.

      On the counter-example side: we are so used to seeing suburban houses that we don't think of them as piles of brick, wood, aluminum siding and shingles. In the old days, my days, the metal bars of TV antennas were the flag of the ugliness troops, but now there are just some satellite dishes on the lookout, which don't look quite as bad. And yet, we set out a small collection of trees and bushes all around, then declare the constructed piles “attractive”. Maybe, if the houses were made by Frank Lloyd Wright my sneers would be misplaced. Everything else is just a rectangular pile with a triangular pile on top.

      The 'burbs are so much a part of our psychological landscape we think the plants and construction mass are a happy pair. No. Foundation plantings are just a desperate attempt to hide … foundations. And, what is it about asphalt and asbestos covered triangles perched above our houses that stir the heart's aesthetics?

      Not all opposites attract. Most houses and their plantings are thrown together by the fates, hoping to coexist for a time, as cheek-by-jowl commuters on a Japanese subway. Anything a gardener can do to ease the strain will lower the world's tension. Maybe, raise plant societies to the Ambassadorial level??