Roses and umbrellas

We read in the ARA that the White House rose garden "It's no longer the green space Jackie Kennedy planned in the 1960s," because "Donald Trump has completed a controversial renovation that has turned the lawn into a white stone patio with yellow and white striped umbrellas."

I will never, ever prefer cement to greenery. I love gardens. They fascinate me. Detecting the work of a "gardener" in a garden thrills me (it's one of the most intrusive professions in the world, by the way). That's why when a fifty-year-old vine dies from lack of water, I think it's a loss of heritage. A garden (and a vineyard and an orchard are gardens) is heritage. Therefore, if you find a lawn planted so long ago, you find heritage, and it's hard to decide to remove it.

But, and leaving aside the ugliness of the umbrellas, what the President of the United States has done seems very good to me, for two reasons. The first: because it's commendable that he himself decided to lay cement (and umbrellas) where there used to be grass. Normally, the ones in charge of gardening (of ordering the gardener what to do, that is) are the first ladies. Jackie Kennedy with the roses, Michelle Obama with the vegetable garden. It's assumed that it's a "sensitive" job, and therefore the macho man doesn't do it, preoccupied as he is with saving the world (sometimes, saving it from itself). That he's the one in charge of something as beautiful and civilized as a garden, instead of cheating on Melania, surprises me, but I like it. And the second: that he brought out the grass. I understand that the man figures that watering the lawn is a big expense, there in Washington, especially—and let me laugh—with climate change.