Elizabeth and Her German Garden

For six weeks she has a Pomeranian house to herself, one nobody has lived in for twenty-five years, supposed to be supervising the painters, in fact eating salad off a tray under the lilacs. There are no bells, so she takes a dinner-bell up to bed, though nobody would hear it. When her husband arrives, he treats her happiness as a reproach and says the lilacs want pruning.

The year that follows: ten pounds of morning-glory seed sown on one book's advice, tea-roses put outdoors against all German authority, three daughters named for the months of their birth, and a husband set down only as the Man of Wrath. It appeared without its author's name, went through printing after printing, and set the pattern for the literary garden diary.