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.

Show me a person without prejudice of any kind on any subject and I'll show you someone who may be admirably virtuous but is surely no gardener. Prejudice against people is reprehensible, but a healthy set of prejudices is a gardener's best friend. Gardening is complicated, and prejudice simplifies it enormously.

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

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.

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.

One becomes a gardener by becoming a gardener.

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