The neighbors who tend this little park in Harlem turned it into a forest. A white gravel path takes you into the cool, dark shade. There are cats here at the Joseph Daniel Wilson Gardens at W. 122 Street between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards.

Just down the street is this urban garden-farm, Our Little Green Acre.

I’ve been posting a lot of gardens here at Jewish Philosophy Place. On my walks around and about in the neighborhood, they form part of my everyday. In a big, urban environment, these diminutive parks and gardens are precious places. Unlike suburban lawns and gardens, these don’t really have to be there. It takes special labor to set them up and aside, to protect and to tend them. Thinking by way of allegory, they are not unlike democracy.