I have tried to come to terms with industrialization as well as the urban and suburban sprawl it produces. I do this by thinking of the ever encroaching human development as nature in a different form. And it really is, I suppose. In a sense, everything our species creates is a garden of sorts. But instead of growing tomatoes and lettuce, some gardens produce chemical plants, skyscrapers, and Starbucks.

I read somewhere that humans share 50 percent of DNA with trees. To compare this with our more closely related but still distant cousins, we also share 98.8 percent of DNA with chimps, 98 percent with pigs, 90 percent with cats, and 84 percent with dogs. On the lower end, we share 26 percent of our DNA with yeast and 25 percent with daffodils.