How do I love the flowers? Let me count the colors.

They came in such a bright array of colors and had interesting names -- no wonder a boy was fascinated by plants.

from the April 4, 2007 edition

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Impressive as these flowers for market were, something appeared one day in a small forgotten corner of neglected earth that was much more astonishing.

I say it "appeared" because I have no recollection at all of it until one day when my mother took me to see it.

She must have spent weeks preparing it and waiting for it to grow, so how I had no idea it was there remains a mystery. I played outside a great deal, so why didn't I stumble on it? I feel sure I hadn't yet gone away to boarding school or she might have sprung it on me when I came home for the holidays. And anyway this surprise – a gift, really – was for a small preschool boy encountering the world's wonders for the very first time.

Small children know nothing about "taste." They perceive without prejudice, pretence, or selectivity. I had never seen in one small place before such a massed, overwhelming concentration of flower-swamped plants. My mother had sown and grown every child-pleasing flower she could muster – nasturtiums, Virginia stocks, zinnias, asters, and bright blue lobelia.

Most of them had that particular brilliance, that sizzling brightness of sheer color that I now associate with annuals. Such single-season plants often seem to compensate for their brevity by an extra intensity of hue.

I do not think there was any attempt at a color scheme or composition, or even calculated spacing between one plant and the next. Mass effect was the aim. Lemon yellow vied with maroon, cream rubbed shoulders with pink, blue with red, and orange marigolds competed with dark purple pansies.

What could possibly have been a better introduction to the jubilation of gardening? The forms, foliage, and habits of a whole range of plants invaded my imagination for the first time.

And, as a bonus, my mother introduced me to plant names, and the fascinating world where botanical Latin meets common English took root.

I still prefer the hand-me-down familiar names, accurate or not – such pet names as "love-in-a-mist," "love-lies-bleeding," "forget­-me-not," "canary creeper," and "burning bush." They all instantly summon the image of particular plants.

I must have been eagerly responsive to my mother's enthusiastic knowledge of these things since I have never forgotten them.

And where friendly names didn't exist, I collected Latin ones that did. It was almost as if I was born knowing ageratum and alyssum, anemone, campanula, and – a special favorite – schizanthus. Now I know this is popularly called "butterfly flower" or "poor man's orchid." Whatever its name, its superabundant flowering filled me with open-eyed wonder as a child.

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