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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.
大约在这时候，我86岁的岳母第一次来参观我们的莱园。她是一个植物学家。她充满怀疑地到处看。她最喜欢干的事就是把番茄植物系在木棍上。岳母原是一个心直口快、实话实说的人，但是后来她学乖了。如今她不说“你把番茄种在菜园潮湿的地方了。”而是一直等到10月份，她每年回一次她欧洲的家时，她才在与我告别时随口说了句：“番茄种在潮湿的土壤里容易生菌。”随后她就走向飞机。但是到了 10月份的时候，菜园里的一切都不重要了，我确信我以后不会再种菜园了。
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，我修整菜园是因为我必须这样做。一天多次经过这个什么都没有种植、被篱笆墙围起来的菜园是让人难以忍受的。而且菜园还有一些好处，这使我每年都会把精力转向那项工作。很少有什么景致能与菜园相媲美：早上7点钟的时候，菜园在阳光的照耀下熠熠生辉，露珠闪耀着光芒，绿荫与阳光交相辉映。其实，这远比成排的热狗要惹人爱。我在意识的深处甚至用这样的想法来宽慰自己：这些植物的健康成长、井然有序和强大的生命力，在某种程度上，反映了一个人精神上的活动。如果不耕作和种植这片菜园，我就不知道4月份有什么意义。
