Isn't it wonderful when you come across something someone has written that reflects exactly how you feel - and they were able to choose just the right words to express it?

This spring I have dug up and created a large new garden in the front of our house, and I cannot tell you how much joy and excitement I have had planning it, scouring various gardening books deciding on just the right perennials and flowering shrubs to plant there.

However, this past week I have spent many hours each day sitting at my elderly mother's bedside in the hospital, and as she dozed I lifted my spirits away from the smells and sounds of hospital life by browsing a gardening book by a particular favourite of mine. Steve Whysall is a gardener and journalist who lives in British Columbia, and he writes various newspaper gardening columns and gardening books.

In his book "100 Best Plants for the Ontario Garden" he wrote:

"If gardening is about anything, it is about knowing and valuing the inherent power of nature to overcome winter and bounce back to life."

It's almost worth living through 4 months of snow each year to experience the overwhelming happiness I feel when I see the 90 daffodils I planted last fall with the grand kids, popping their heads up through the still cold soil. Yea, they survived! Or, watching the blossom on our new pear tree (that we thought had died) swelling by the day.

Thank you Steve Whysall for taking me away from a sad reality of my life, even for just a little while.

Such is the power of a few well-chosen words.