One becomes a gardener by becoming a gardener.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Am I accurately reporting what I see in such a blossom? The answer is no ... and yes.