A fact bobbed up from my memory, that the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad. It was a mind-altering drug we took daily.

Radio listeners are voyeurs: lurking, invisible, eavesdropping.

That small circle of earth became a second home to both of us. Gardening boring? Never! It has surprise, tragedy, startling developments - a soap opera growing out of the ground. I'd forgotten that tremolo of expectation produced by a tiny forest of sprouts.

A picture tells a thousand words. But you get a thousand pictures from someone's voice.

You can't see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland.

The object in America is to avoid contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends. Here you have a million crabs living in a million crevices. ... But the garden's greatest benefit, I feel, as not relief to the eyes, but to make the eyes sees our neighbors.

Television, I'm afraid, has isolated us more than race, class, or ethnicity.