Katharine White was an editor at The New Yorker from its early days, in 1925, until her retirement in 1958. She was also an avid gardener. Her husband, the writer E. B. White, recalls in the introduction to his wife’s book Onward and Upward in the Garden, "She simply accepted the act of gardening as the natural thing to be occupied with in one’s spare time, no matter where one was or how deeply involved in other affairs." Katharine White also adored shopping in mail-order catalogs. "Hour after hour, she studied, sifted , pondered, rejected, sorted in the delirium of future blooming and fruiting," her husband wrote. This insatiable passion for gardening catalogs prompted her to take up writing after decades of editing. Her first feature was a critical review of seed catalogs and nurserymen that launched her famous garden writing series "Onward and Upward."

To my mind, there are two types of lady gardeners. There are those extraordinary women who not only know every flower, but know every flower by its Latin name. These women look as beautiful as the flora they nurture, gardening in wide-brimmed hats and pearls, trailing chiffon, and wearing Ferragamo shoes. They keep meticulous gardening journals, plot plant placements on graph paper, and never break into a sweat when wielding a trowel and a spade. Katharine White belonged to this gardening genus.

"Grunge" accurately describes the other group. We are always hot, smelly, and sweaty in the garden, boasting not so much a green thumb as dirty fingernails because we forgot where we put our gardening gloves. We speak of "that little yellow flower" and point. We also tend to be manic about gardening, seized not only by visions of earthly Paradise but also Kubla Khan’s Xanadu. How else to explain why it never occurred to me when I ordered fourteen rosebushes in April, that they would al arrive on the same May morning, necessitating two days of frenzied labor? Before rosebushes can go into the ground, very deep holes must be dug. Still, into the ground they all went. Miraculously, the gardener did not accompany them. Now they are the love children of my middle-age, conceived during passionate afternoon perusals of glossy gardening catalogs.

Gardening came easily to Katharine White, but writing was "slow and tortuous going," her husband noted. Phrases are far easier for me than double-ditching a flower bed. Still, I think of my adventures in the garden as a trajectory of forward motion, an evolution of soul. Gardening has become an unexpected instrument of grace, for I’ve discovered hours of inner peace on my knees, digging in the dirt. Here is the one place I don’t think about work, or worry about whatever it is that I can’t control. The complete absorption, the sacrament of the present moment I experience when planting or weeding brings exquisite contentment. My mind is stilled and my heart expands. Now I know why the Great Creator intended for us to flourish in a garden. So much for second-guessing the wisdom of Spirit.

I occasionally get notes back from a few of you each week. Sometimes, you let me know that you liked what I had to say, or the subject of Sarah’s message of Simple Abundance hit close to home, or was just what you needed to hear. I am happy to be the instrument for that. I try to choose these subjects for me… then I just share them with you.

This is the first of much more to come here on this webpage. Bookmark this page, and return each week to share in the latest inspiration!

Now to the subject: Gardening! I took two days off this week, and played in MY garden! I have only about 100 square feet, and it is filling up fast. I have only the root vegetables to go yet. Strawberries, cauliflower, spinach, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme – I had a wonderful time, in between raindrops, cultivating, weeding, and slug-baiting. The Dahlias, calendula, daiseys, mums and geraniums are up and running as well.