We quickly discovered that two kittens were much more fun than one.

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.

Not knowing where your food comes from is a primary form of alienation.

An angel, legend has it, took pity on a little shepherd girl who had nothing to give to the Infant Jesus in his manger. The angel handed her a weed, but first transformed it into this beautiful flower of winter.

The gardens I love best are those that are still affectionately tended by the people who own them and who made them - who planned and planted and replanned and replanted them, who dug in the dirt and moved hoses and watched the gardens change with the cycle of the seasons and over the passage of years.

Democracy is fine in politics. It should stay there, and we need more of it. But its political virture is no reason to practice it in the garden.

In addition to all its rich offerings to the body and its five senses, gardening engages the mind.