I suppose that for most people one of the darker joys of gardening is that once you've got started it's not at all hard to find someone who knows a little bit less than you.

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.

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.

I know of no common interest that exceeds gardening as a source of lifelong friendships, nor as a means of making new friends almost constantly.

But there is one place where a person can make choices that will lead in a small way toward greater sanity in dealing with the natural order. That place is the private garden.

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.

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