It’s a beautiful morning and I can hardly wait to head out to the garden. My trowel isn’t in one of the several places I usually stick it, so I grab a pronged implement. I try to use it to dig a hole for a potted perennial I bought three weeks ago, but the dirt keeps falling through the prongs. I start searching for the trowel again and notice the dead blossoms on the tips of my blue lace hydrangea. I’ve got my clippers in my pocket, but not my gloves. Despite my promise to myself, I use my bare hands to pull at the violets beneath the hydrangea. Soon my hands are grimy, and dirt embedded in my split nails. I’m not making a dent in the violet blanket, so I start to clip the hydrangea, wishing I could remember whether this one grows on old wood or new and should be pruned in the spring or fall.

I go over to check on my Annabelle hydrangea, which I did know when to prune. On every plant about half of the leaves are stuck two together, forming a little pouch. I pry one open and find a tiny worm and some black stuff—eggs, I presume. Like a mad woman, I open another 30 or so pouches until my fingers are covered in worm slime and—eggs. I see that the brief but heavy rain has bent over the stems of the amsonia and the peonies which I forgot to stake, again. I’ve still got the homeless plant. My puppy, Hattie, has found the trowel and is prancing around the yard with it. I know better than to think she’ll give it up to me. Feeling overwhelmed, I head into the house.

Slumped on the couch, I spot some gardening books on the shelves across from me. (Lest this give the impression that all my books are organized, I hasten to say that I have no idea where all my other gardening books are.) I spot one called Why We Garden, by Jim Nollman. My very question! Why, indeed?

There’s no easy answer—the book is erudite and philosophical. The opening sentence of the introduction declares that people garden “to recreate a bit of paradise within an imperfect world.” Not I—I have no delusions of paradise. Nollman points out that the Victorian definition of gardening is still firmly entrenched: the control of nature by human beings for aesthetic reasons. The author himself would redefine gardening, not as control, but as nurturing—“a nurturing participation with the natural processes of place.” He goes on to say that this sense of place, meaning this relationship to the land as well as the land itself, provides an ethic. “It signifies a respectful, cooperative, and occasionally compliant relationship with the landscape we inhabit.” This idea makes sense to me, though I see it more as a byproduct than a motivator of gardening.

The author takes us on many strolls through his own garden, or gardens, as he describes several different kinds of gardens on his property—including the “weed garden.” Everything in his garden becomes a springboard to abstract ideas and scholarly ruminations. Here and there are ideas that resonate, like the fact that gardeners connect with one another; creating community is an important function of gardening. His enthusiastic endorsement of certain species makes me want to hurry to the nearest nursery. But mostly the book is a rambling conglomerate of history, literary allusions, political ideas, ecological and mystical connections (or nonconnections). After skimming it, I still have no idea why I garden.

There are several other gardening books on the shelf, but most of them will tell me what I should be doing instead of sitting here reading. I pull out Elsa Bakalar’s A Garden of One’s Own. Funny how the title doesn’t strike me the same way it did 30 years ago. Then it was, “Yes! The garden is my own, mine, all mine to do whatever I want with it!” Now, it’s still my own, but sometimes I don’t want to do much with it. Elsa—I feel I can call her Elsa because her tone is so warm and friendly—asks early on, “Why do you want to garden?” She observes that people make their gardens for many different reasons: the joy of working in the soil, in feeling harmony with nature; to have an extension of living space, a place to entertain; to create beauty governed by order and aesthetic discipline; as an antidote to the stress of daily life. Elsa says gardens are “places to imagine, to own, to work in, sometimes to take refuge in. When the whole world seems too big for us, and eludes our grasp, we can simplify it by making a small one for ourselves. Perhaps ‘garden’ is an idea. If so, the possibilities are endless.”

A Garden of One’s Own tells the beginning gardener everything he or she needs to know, and it reminds longtime gardeners of tips and plants they may have forgotten. Elsa invites readers into her garden, sharing funny stories, joys and disappointments. Unlike Nollman, Elsa stays in her own garden, talking directly to us, giving practical advice and hands-on instructions. She tempers her directions with a friendly “Here’s what I do,” and tells us not to “despair” if something we planted doesn’t make it. Her enthusiasm and hard work are inspiring, maybe even a bit relentless—“a hammock is no place for a gardener.”

Elsa says, “I love the colors and miraculous shapes of flowers. My garden is no Camelot. But it is full of flowers and it makes me happy.” I look out into my own gardens, and I don’t see the weeds or invaders—I see only the colors and shapes of the borders. I love my new best friend Elsa’s way of seeing. “The destination—your ‘dream garden’—is always around the next bend, always receding, and the getting there, even though never quite arriving, is much more than half the fun.” Whatever the reason for having a garden, “It’s the being in it, after all, that counts, that makes gardening the absorbing thing it is.” I see my trowel down in the yard and sneak out the door while Hattie is asleep.