Where's the Sense?

Part of my struggling to uncover a useful ecocritical topic in Sense and Sensibility, I admit, has been my focus. I have been trying to hone in on the trees and birds. Granted, walking in gardens and examining the skies is a part of this text, and certainly part of the sisters’ adoration of Norland. But widening my lens has helped me see the central theme of the text as an obvious ecocritical one. At least a basic read will glean that our two heroines are the prototypical examples of cultivation and authenticity. How this relates to ecocriticism is easy enough. I know enough about S&S to know that not all critics agree that the book is fully in favor of Sense’s victory over Sensibility, though that seems like the case to me. How can we see this view as it relates to how our other poets have examined the more-than-human world? How can sense (cultivation, gardening) commingle with sensibility (the wild, untamed) if it isn’t, as I hope but don’t see yet in Austin’s text, the clear conquer of the other? Another question: is sensibility really natural and is sense really such the controlling, human-only factor that it seems to be on first blush? I have my suspicions. Not to get into left field, but if ants marching in pairs seems like sense, why isn’t the way Colonel Brandon’s revealation of some very telling details about Willoughby (which we would have very much liked to have known earlier, but then where would have been the story?) a developed aspect of human sensibility? In other words, where does instinct stop and nurture/behavior begin for Austin? This to me might seem like a chicken/egg thing, though I hear with that we now have an answer.