May to Remember

This picture is probably not a very good picture and it almost certainly means next to nothing to you. Yet to me, this is almost a picture of my life and the people and places that have been important in my life.

That Rosemary bush; the London Pride; the sycamore log pile; a swing; the daffodils; a plastic greenhouse; that window waiting to be a cold frame; the nest box; Yew; the frog; the Mouse Ears Hosta in the pot sneaking out the corner of the picture; Toad Lily; the pots of Liatris spicata waiting to emerge; Fennel; the white tower and my little Bay Tree.

There's family and friends and childhood and depression; there's ecology, love and views over the Forth; there are stomach complaints with firebrand socialism; suicide, recovery and liberal democracy; there's the Beechgrove and Glen Lyon; there's Cambo and London and Crete; there's sitting on benches and Gardening Scotland; there's . . .  there's . . . there's.  And so it goes on.

Seventy years ago was Victory in Europe Day - that day saw the defeat of an ideology that categorised and defined people in clear and simple terms and then, on that basis, decided who should live and who should die and who should be used and who should rule.  Millions of people were killed deliberately on the basis that you can look at a person, sum them up in a few carefully chosen words and file them away.  Millions of people with pictures like this in their head - pictures with all kinds of associations and connections so unique to them that it would take a lifetime for them to try and explain them to you.

How dare anyone define a human life with a few select words - be they political, psychological, social or economic?  A human life is an art gallery and a photograph album of pictures of intricate and wondrous complexity - and even the artist doesn't see everything.

May we never forget that.