Some time ago this garden became a forest. The overgrown tulips befriended the wildflowers. Now some small white faces of an unknown species with a bright yellow center are caught peaking beneath rugged triangular leaves of vines that cover it all.

The keeper roams the area somewhere nearby. What was once manicured tending to sections has become careful corrections to overgrowth ever since the edges became obfuscated. The keeper used to have the privilege of tending to each patch before the working light of the day entirely vanished: weeding the soil beneath the pink, purple, and blue flowerbeds, harvesting each ripe fruit before turning in… There was no end to the possible life the keeper could grow. Then the days felt shorter. The demands of the lone gardener grew longer as her knowledge of how to prevent failing sprouts led her to neglect ripe fruit. Yet, that doesn’t bother her, there must be priorities and some excess can go to nature.

Several nights, the keeper toiled too long and couldn’t find the path home. A rugged heart doesn’t mind a night among the stars. Alas, a few too many and the keeper must reckon with the home she must tend to as well.

This bastion of failures on both fronts leads to a dark period of divergent priorities between the garden and home. The gardener can see the nourished world beyond her fence line that looks like her garden can continue to reach across the globe. This pride tears at the moral question: should I tend to my work or home?

Enough time in this limbo observes the garden give way to weeds and clear signs that the decision has become overdue. My mastery of known knowns has given way for unknowns.

~Epilogue~

(Read only if you don't know what to think)

The greatest setback is not merely passing mount stupid in the overconfidence phase of learning and mastery of a field like life. The better depiction of the second phase of adult life is that it brings a boom in awareness of known unknowns and, if you do not have the curtails of success to pull you through it, it will grow into more unknowns and overwhelming uncertainty.

Above all, the delusion of ‘wiser’ folk occurs when we convince [our]selves to be paralyzed by indecision - weighing many options and considerations. Inversely in younger years, we would boil it down to one simple fork at a time. It is that simple. The sooner we take the road of action, the sooner we will realize it.

A patch-worked, half baked solution is infinitely better than nothing at all.