Paul Fleischman

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.

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.

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.

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.