It is agreeable to waddle about in one’s own paradise, knowing that thousands of others have better gardens with better thises and thats and better grown, too, and no weeds at all. To know this and grin as complacently as a terrier who just got into the deviled eggs, and to reflect that there is no garden in England or France I envy, and not one I’d swap for mine: this is the aim of gardening—not to make us complacent idiots, exactly, but to make us content and calm for a time, with sufficient energy (even after wars with bindweed) to feel an awestruck thanks to God that such happiness can exist. For a few days, of course.

—By the famed Washington Post Garden Columnst Henry Mitchell (see p.6 for two of his books). Sent in by James Sommerville of Cedar Rapids, IA.L