Of course, the character of my garden is also determined by things beyond any human decision, mine or anyone else's.

Whether the are splashed with gold or white, striped with chartreuse or cream, or margined in light tones, they are nature's weaklings, and nature is still a matter of survival of the fittest. The survival of variegated plants depends on human intervention.

Gardener's , like everyone else, live second by second and minute by minute. What we see at one particular moment is then and there before us. But there is a second way of seeing. Seeing with the eye of memory, not the eye of our anatomy, calls up days and seasons past and years gone by.

When I need to be precise about a plant, I use its Latin name, even if my nongardening friends sometimes look at me a little funny for using big words in a dead language - or in the kind of horticultural Esperanto that botanical names make up.

Crabgrass is aptly descriptive of this hated weed, for it does scuttle quickly through a lawn.

Plants are the original chemists. Their sophistication makes DuPont and Monsanto look like little kids with chemistry sets.

Gardening transcends everything that otherwise divides us.