Is it possible to order a garden from Martha Stewart Omnipedia, and via 2-day priority mail, it arrives fully formed, plopped onto your front yard by the mailman?
Or better yet, what if your garden remains airborne, forever nomadic?
So you order from TrueValue.com, and before the end of the business day, it begins its perpetual migration. From Chicago then Beijing and Vladivostok, and then on to Dubai and all the major European cities before waiting out a 104-hour delay back in Chicago and continuing on its suborbital journey. From one aerotropolis to another aerotropolis, they are tended to by the US Postal Service, a legion of 24-hour phone order operators, cargo pilots, air marshalls, baggage handlers, and customs officers. But I wonder, are USDA airport inspectors competent gardeners?
On a clear day, you can see their complex Baroque compositions crisscrossing against a deterrestrialized groundplane. A hortus conclusus twice removed from the earth.
But you can still tend to it from your earthbound living room. Simply pick up one of the many home and garden catalogs littering your mailbox, or tune in to QVC and the Home Shopping Network, and order the necessary fertilizer, clippers, and that prize-winning new hybrid. It's only a phone call or a mouse click away. Tele-gardening.
And with this potentially lucrative market, Airbus just might save itself from dissolution.
When you need to take a look, simply hack into airport CCTV cameras; X-ray machines; TSA's chemical, biological and nuclear detection network; and air traffic control radars. Or track their migration through Google Earth.
Could these be the tracings of Paradise or the ominous tracks of a botanical invasion out to finish the native vegetation of England once and for all?