1. Theme

Gardening, which begins in spring - a season of hope, keeps people hopeful for the future, especially in the coldest days of December.

2. Structure

1) Part 1 (Para. 1-2): Gardening as a way of celebrating the coming of spring.

2) Part 2 (Paras. 3-10): Reasons for keeping a garden: gardening helps us learn by trial and error, reminds us of the delicacy and bountifulness of our planet and helps character building.

3) Part 4 (Paras.11-12): Gardening enables people to stay hopeful for the future.

3. Questions

1) How do you understand the title of the text?

2) What does the author mean when he says that perhaps gardening had to do with human nature?

3) What is at the heart of all gardening?

4) What does the author allude to by saying “And that’s what gardening is all about—character building. Which is why Adam was a gardener.”?

4. Discussion

1) What are the most delightful things people expect from a garden?

2) When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, but the gardeners themselves. Give your own Explanations.

3) How do you understand the statement A garden is an awful responsibility?

Writing Devices

1. Irony

1) There is a human instinct at work here, a kind of back-breaking make-believe that has no reality.

2) …April is for getting irritated all over again at this pointless, time-consuming hobby. I do not understand people who claim to “love” gardening.

The attractions of gardening, I think, at least for a certain number of gardeners, are neurotic and moral.

3) Now, if you could raise hot dogs outside your window, you’d really have something you could justify without a second’s hesitation.

... I find myself going out to lean on the fence and look at that miserable plot of land, resolving with all my rational powers not to plant it again.

She is an outspoken, truthful woman, or she was until she learned better.

2. Personification

1) And the sun means business, suddenly, and has a different, deeper yellow in its beams on the carpet.

2) The birds begin screaming hysterically, thinking what I am thinking—the worms are deliciously worming their way through the melting soil.

3) In some cases, as with beans and cucumbers, your children— as it were, begin to turn upon you in massive numbers, growing more and more each morning and threatening to follow you into the house to strangle you in their vines.

3. Contrast

There are few sights quite as beautiful as a vegetable garden glistening in the sun, all dewy and glittering with a dozen shades of green at seven in the morning. Far lovelier, in fact, than rows of hot dogs.

Sentence Paraphrase

1. When you think how easy and cheap, relatively, it is to buy a bunch of carrots or beets, why raise them? (para. 1)

2. There is a human instinct at work here, a kind of back-breaking make-believe that has no reality. (para. 1)

3. As it is, though, I cannot deny that when April comes I find myself going out to lean on the fence and look at that miserable plot of land, resolving with all my rational powers not to plant it again. (para. 2)

4. And the sun means business, suddenly, and has a different, deeper yellow in its beams on the carpet. The birds begin screaming hysterically, thinking what I am thinking—the worms are deliciously worming their way through the melting soil. (para. 2)

5. But black plastic looks so industrial, so unromantic, that I have gradually moved over to hay mulch. (para. 4)

6. I suppose if you loaded the soil with chemical fertilizer these differences would be less noticeable, but I use it sparingly and only in rows right where seeds are planted rather than broadcast over the whole area. (para. 5)

7. beans and cucumbers, your children—as it were, begin to turn upon you in massive numbers, growing more and more each morning and threatening to follow you into the house to strangle you in their vines. (para. 6)

8. She is an outspoken, truthful woman, or she was until she learned better. (para. 8)

9. But by October nothing in the garden matters, so sure am I that I will never plant it again. (para. 8)

10. There are few sights quite as beautiful as a vegetable garden glistening in the sun, all dewy and glittering with a dozen shades of green at seven in the morning. (para. 9)

11. In some pocket of the mind there may even be a tendency to change this vision into a personal reassurance that all this healthy growth, this orderliness and thrusting life must somehow reflect movements in one’s own spirit. (para. 9)

12. A garden is an extension of oneself… and so it has to be an arena where striving does not cease, but continues by other means. (para. 10)

13. But is it conceivable that the father of us should have been a weaver, shoemaker, or anything but a gardener? (para. 11)