The Elephant Story

Many years ago, we had this large cement elephant that sat in front of the garden center. Nobody wanted to buy it. Like a real elephant, it was impossibly large and heavy to steal or move or put in your backyard. So it just sat there and people would come in and comment about “the elephant out front,” make jokes, etc. I think over the years someone might have broken a tusk off or something, some drunk stumbling home from the bar, but it was always there, day after day, to our surprise.

One day we finally moved it (I don’t remember who or why). We might as well have had a real elephant and shot it or something. No, seriously, everyone kept asking “where’s the elephant?”

After a while (we were slow, you see), we got to thinking about it. Why was the elephant so important to everyone? Even we kind of missed it out there.

Well it soon became obvious. We were all really little elephants and we needed a big one to look up to. Every one of us. Even our customers were secretly living elephant lives and we had dishonored the symbol of our common elephant-ness by hiding it from those that most required to know it was there. That it really was okay to have an elephant around and to display it, for all to see.

And it came to symbolize strength, vitality, beauty, and, above all, adventure! Ah yes, we said, adventure—gazing out to the horizon from our backyards. And thus our mission was born, “Guiding Your Garden Adventure.”

Soon, a website followed - www.gardenadventures.com - and little hand-painted elephants were distributed to all the employees at the annual Christmas party. It all made so much undeniable sense, that it was hard to resist the t-shirts and signs and re-painting the trucks. All because of an elephant - or rather, because of the lack of an elephant. Yes, it was the lack of an elephant that guided our hands into the earth to begin with, so it would be that the elephant would carry us into the future.

Oh yeah, and then somebody finally bought our elephant and took it to its wonderful new home.

Life is good.