A garden is a peaceful, beautiful sanctuary, but beneath its serene
appearance is a seething hive of sex, violence, and treachery--among its
flowers and insects, that is. Based on years of voyeuristic observation,
Love in the Garden reveals intricate, humorous, and often horrifying
intimate details about the frenzied sexual lives of garden flowers and
insects. Written with a poetic fancy and with wit, and from a
shamelessly anthropomorphic viewpoint, Love in the Garden delights in
the ingenuity and variety of the sexual tactics of insects and flowers.
The bee orchid, for instance, attracts male bees by duplicating the
scent emitted by female bees during mating season. A gullible male
arrives and searches excitedly for the non-existent female opening.
Then, a second male arrives, mistakes the first male for a female, and,
as they wrestle and wiggle furiously, the bee orchid is pollinated. In
the realm of insects, sex is often accompanied with violence and in some
cases, even cannibalism. Take the notorious female praying mantis: in
the midst of the sexual act, she beheads her enraptured male partner,
who carries on though headless, while she devours him bite by bite.
Love in the Garden does not aim to enrich the scientific knowledge of
its reader. Instead, it hopes to involve the reader, through sexuality
and all forms of sensation, in the turbulence of life.
