One of my all time favorite books is Candide, in which the hero turns his back on the horrors of the world and instead cultivates his garden. The book seems fresh as a daisy even today. The symbolic story is less a rejection of activism than a rejection of pie-in-the-sky optimism and an embrace of doing it yourself. Candide would appreciate Stella’s garden–shaggy and overgrown but still putting out buds and shoots. I have a couple more photos at flickr.
