That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit th… - Diane Ackerman

I plan my garden as I wish I could plan my life, with islands of surprise, color, and scent. A seductive aspect of gardening is how many rituals it requires.

We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?

We hallucinate sounds more often than sights. There are auditory mirages, which vanish without trace; auditory illusions that turn out to be something other than they seemed; and, of course, voices that speak to saints, seers, and psychotics, telling them how to act and what to believe.