Cultivating Delight –
A Natural History
of My Garden

by Diane Ackerman

(HarperCollins, 2001)

A naturalist and poet who has written about everything from slugs to short-tailed albatrosses delights and educates us as she discusses life in her own garden through the seasons. My own copy is thick with Post-its marking favorite passages. For instance she tells us, “I can spend a small eternity with a rose.” And she doesn’t mind Japanese beetles having sex on the roses, she just wishes “they wouldn’t eat at the same time.”