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     For me, gardening is a great reality check. It is the way I stay in touch with what I consider the "real world."

     During the past month or so I've spent a lot of time working on our new website. Although I had ideas about how it should look and what it should do, I had no idea about how to make it happen. So I hired a nice young man to do that part. (I assume he's a young man - these web wizards often are and his return address sticker has Wonder Woman on it. For all I know, he's not even old enough to drive!)

     The internet, the world-wide web, even computers remain a mystery to me. In spite of the fact that I use them everyday and indeed wrote a book about computer networking before anyone had heard of www, I have no idea how they work, why they work, what makes them work. (Of course, I could say the same for electricity!) That makes me a little nervous.

     I like knowing how things work. I like to be able to see gears turning, flowers blooming, fruit setting. I like to think I have moved a little beyond my ancestors to whom the whole world was mysterious and scary, but the fact is I really haven't.

     I'm just more comfortable with the mysteries of the natural world than I am with the mysteries of the electronic world. I have no more idea how a seed works than I do how the internet world. A seed is one of the most miraculous and amazing things in the world. A little hard nubbin of a thing somehow manages to transform itself into a rose or a canteloupe or a chinaberry tree. What could be more amazing than that?

     But the seeds and plants and trees and fruits are all things I can see and touch. I can nurture them or jerk them up and toss them into the compost. I can move them into a better spot with more sun or less gravel. These things make sense to me even if I don't understand exactly how the miracle happens.

     The internet doesn't make sense to me. Maybe once I learn to manipulate it myself, it will be different. Maybe when I can do my own website, I'll feel it is real, but I doubt it. I've been switching on the lights for years now, and still haven't a clue as to why they come on!

     One of the best things about gardening for me is the feeling that I am in touch with something basic, essential, and real. Perhaps one of the good things to come out of the Y2K panic will be that more people will get involved in growing some of their own food and learn about the lessons to be gleaned from gardening.

     Nothing can be more basic than coaxing something from the earth - a flower or fruit or vegetable. It isn't a chore. It's a privilege, an opportunity to share in the creation of the world. That creation goes on and on, over and over again every spring, and those of us who are gardeners are lucky indeed to participate.

     After a day of staring at the computer screen, sending notes back and forth to strangers via electronic impulses, and turning real pictures into blips on the phone line, it is a relief to go outside and smush a snail. Snail smushing is simple, elemental. Pinching off dead blossoms encourages more blossoms. That is easy to understand - the plant has to make seeds, you won't let it, so it has to make more flowers. Shaking the tomato cages so the pollen will fall from one flower onto another is no technical feat. It's just gravity, and I "get" gravity.

     I can see and smell and taste the things in my garden. They are not "virtual." I can get my hands dirty, my knees scratched and my back sore out there. It's a wonderful kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with eyestrain, shoulder tension, or brain-deadness that comes from computer work.

     Gardening is full of contradictions, but they all make sense. Somehow you are cleansed by getting dirty; you encourage growth by snipping off the top of plants; you feed young seedlings by piling the remains of their dead ancestors around them. You have fun while puttering around, sometimes not really doing anything at all.

     Obviously, gardening is a multi-faceted pursuit. While it may be practical in the sense that it makes your home look better or provides food for the table or impresses the neighbors, it is also much more. It is soul satisfying and mind clearing. It is real.

     Don't even think about messing with that reality by adding chemicals!