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At about this time, my wife's 86-year-old mother, a botanist, makes her first visit to the garden. She looks about skeptically. Her favorite task is binding the tomato plants to stakes. She is an outspoken, truthful woman, or she was until she learned better. Now, instead of saying, "You have planted the tomatoes in the damp part of the garden," she waits until October when she makes her annual trip to her home in Europe; then she gives me my good-bye kiss and says casually, "Tomatoes in damp soil tend more to get fungi," and walks away to her plane. But by October nothing in the garden matters, so sure am I that I will never plant it again.
大約在這時候，我86歲的岳母第一次來參觀我們的萊園。她是一個植物學家。她充滿懷疑地到處看。她最喜歡干的事就是把番茄植物系在木棍上。岳母原是一個心直口快、實話實說的人，但是后來她學乖了。如今她不說“你把番茄種在菜園潮濕的地方了。”而是一直等到10月份，她每年回一次她歐洲的家時，她才在與我告別時隨口說了句：“番茄種在潮濕的土壤里容易生菌。”隨后她就走向飛機。但是到了 10月份的時候，菜園里的一切都不重要了，我確信我以后不會再種菜園了。
I garden, I suppose, because I must. It would be intolerable to have to pass an unplanted fenced garden a few times a day. There are also certain compensations, and these must be what annually turn my mind toward all that work. There are few sights quite as beautiful as a vegetable garden glistening in the sun, all dewy and glittering with a dozen shades of green at seven in the morning. Far lovelier, in fact, than rows of hot dogs. In some pocket of the mind there may even be a tendency to change this vision into a personal reassurance that all this healthy growth, this orderliness and thrusting life must somehow reflect movements in one's own spirit. Without a garden to till and plant I would not know what April was for.
我想，我修整菜園是因為我必須這樣做。一天多次經過這個什么都沒有種植、被籬笆墻圍起來的菜園是讓人難以忍受的。而且菜園還有一些好處，這使我每年都會把精力轉向那項工作。很少有什么景致能與菜園相媲美：早上7點鐘的時候，菜園在陽光的照耀下熠熠生輝，露珠閃耀著光芒，綠蔭與陽光交相輝映。其實，這遠比成排的熱狗要惹人愛。我在意識的深處甚至用這樣的想法來寬慰自己：這些植物的健康成長、井然有序和強大的生命力，在某種程度上，反映了一個人精神上的活動。如果不耕作和種植這片菜園，我就不知道4月份有什么意義。
