Paths of Desire

By Dominique Browning

" Leonard and I were walking through the yard early one morning at the beginning of winter, reviewing the possibilities ahead one last time before the cold settled in seriously. His crew had delivered enough firewood to see me trough the Ice Age. I was (of course) adding to our book-length list of what would go where, haggling over what to keep, what to transplant. We had started laying out the outlines of the new beds with colorful cords I had bought at the hardware store. With every walk-through, the shapes of the beds changed, but I knew I had the Winter of Last Dayreams ahead of me to mull it all over. Leonard was fun to talk to. He was entering a boyish middle-age; he was overstressed; and, as he constantly told me, the demands of the business were taking a toll on his wife, and on his heart. (Why do men worry so about their hearts? They all do, even twelve-year-old men -- their hearts and their knees.)"

Mrs. Greenthumbs Plows Ahead

By Cassandra Danz

"His mother's flowery mead was so successful, he turned much of what was a formal English lawn into meadow as well. Instead of resting solidly on perfectly manicured greensward, a series of topiary sculptures now seem to float to a waving sea of color and undulating grass."

The Curious Gardener's Almanac

By Niall Edworthy

"Pea and Mint Soup

Plain boiled or steamed peas are a simple and tasty accompaniment to many meat and fish dishes, but it is almost as easy to make a delicious soup from them. Boil about a pound of freshly podded peas in about a quart of vegetable or chicken stock along with a largish potato and an onion, both chopped roughly. When the ingredients have softened, whiz them in a blender and then return the mixture to the pan and stir in some cream and a small handful f chopped mint."

Second Nature

By Michael Pollan

"Nowhere in the world are lawns as prized as in America. In little more than a century, we've rolled a green mantle of it across the continent, with scant thought to the local conditions or expense. America has some 50,000 square miles of lawn under cultivation, on which we spend an estimated $30 billion a year-this according to the Lawn Institute, a Pleasant Hill, Tennessee, outfit devote to publicizing the benefits of turf to Americans (surely a case of preaching to the converted). Like the interstate highway system, like fast-food chains, like television, the lawn has served to unify the American landscape; it is what makes the suburbs of Cleveland and Tucson, the streets of Eugene and Tampa, look more alike than not. According to Ann Leighton, the late historian of gardens, America has made essentially one important contribution to world garden design: the custom of "uniting the front lawns of however many houses there may be on both sides of a street to present an untroubled aspect of expansive green to the passerby." France has its formal, geometric gardens, England its picturesque parks, and America this unbounded democratic river of manicured lawn along which we array our houses."

The Savage Garden

By Peter D'Amoto

"After winter, when the last of the severe frost dangers are over, the coverings can be removed. Some plants that do not form true winter resting buds, such as the short-lived Drosera capillaris or Pinguicula lusitianica, will probably have died off. Such varieties usually return from, or cn be reintroduced by, seed from a previous season."