It was a bit of a surprise when I realized, not all that long ago, that I like living in Chicago, that this wasn't just the place where I ended up and happened to find a job. I even like gardening here.Yes, thereÓs this little matter of the weather, but as Henry Mitchell (my favorite garden writer until the end of time) once wrote: Ôø‡It is not ie to garden anywhere.Ôø‡I try to keep that seven-word homily in mind when a summer wind shipwrecks my tomato cages or when the lake effect turns a balmy spring morning into a frigid afternoon. Ôø‡April is the cruelest month,Ôø‡ begins T.S. EliotÓs famous poem. No kidding.Mitchell also wrote that Ôø‡wherever humans garden magnificently there are magnificent heartbreaks,Ôø‡ and then proceeded to remind us of gardeners beset by droughts, floods, sudden frosts or a herd of heifers breaking through a hedge. (Need I mention deer?)But Chicago has its merits, most notably its change in seasons. Certainly, when summer passes, the shorter days are attended by a wisp of sadness, but then comes autumnÔø‡so magical in its brilliant explosions of colors. Did you see the red-orange sumacs along the Edens Expressway this past October? Or the waves of goldenrod near the Field Museum?Now itÓs winter, which offers a magic of its own. Frosted glass, glittering icicles, and snow-clad evergreens. Plunging temperatures, and then a thaw, teasing us with its hint of spring. Not far off is the day when we step outside, rummage in the mulch and discover a shoot. Chives. Tarragon. And over here a pansy, planted in fall, already has a flower bud. It must have been for pleasures such as these that we devised the word ineffable.

Perhaps, if we could garden 365 days a year, we wouldnÓt enjoy it quite so much.