It is a truth universally acknowledged that a widow in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband. Or so all my friends constantly tell me. Being such a widow, however, I'm a little more skeptical. Just as I'm skeptical of those who say that doing something once makes it easier to do a second time. That may be true of such things as skydiving or buying a couture dress. It is not true of murder. Believe me, I know. But let me begin where it all began for me.

I didn?t murder him. Not really! It was the garden. Those silly little plants. However, just how easily an idle suggestion will be taken to heart cannot be held against you. Right?

I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to put your foot down in gardening. If I had actually taken counsel of my friends, I should not have had a thing growing in the garden today but weeds. And besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait. Her mind is made up. She knows just what she will raise; and she has an infinite variety of early and late. The most humiliating thing to me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man. Nature is prompt, decided, and inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plants with a vigor and freedom that I admire; and, the more worthless the plant, the more rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it early and late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign of exhaustion.

?Eternal gardening is the price of liberty,? is a motto that I should put over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it is not wholly true; for there is no liberty in gardening. The woman who undertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. She felicitates herself, that, when she gets it once planted, she will have a season of rest and of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of her seeds. It is a green anticipation. She has planted a seed that will keep her awake nights; drive rest from her bones, and sleep from her pillow. Hardly is the garden planted, when she must begin to hoe it. The weeds have sprung up all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundant life. The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeper than conscience. Talk about the Rhydin Docks!?the roots of these are like the sources of the inbreed race. And the weeds are not all.

I awake in the morning (and a thriving garden will wake a person up two hours before she ought to be out of bed), and think of the tomato-plants,?the leaves like fine lace-work, owing to black bugs that skip around, and can?t be caught. Somebody ought to get up before the dew is off, (why don?t the dew stay on till after a reasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves. Soot is so much blacker than the bugs that they are disgusted, and go away.

You can?t get up too early, if you have a garden. I think that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up all night, and sleep daytimes.

Things appear to go on in the night in the garden uncommonly. Things sprout. Take on a life that was not wholly expected when those seeds were sowed.

I didn?t really kill him. It was just a mild suggestion. ?Isn?t it great how flower petals liven up a dull salad? How was I to know when I placed the bowl of fresh cut stems on the table that the fool man would take me serious (for once in his useless life) and choose the breathtakingly irresistible petals of the Foxglove to decorate his dreadfully plain iceberg salad?

Being married was much like tending a garden. But I only had time for one.

In defense of the Foxglove, it really is a lovely plant.

Now, please make note. A really good fertilizer is essential to the success of your garden.

For one long, breathless moment I hung in the air beyond the edge of the platform, suspended more by disbelief than by any law of physics. The wind of the onrushing train whipped my hair back from my face. Its roar filled my head to bursting.

A hand seized my arm and jerked me back onto the platform. I caromed off several bodies and came to rest gazing at a black-clad adolescent whose haircut made him look like a punk poodle. "Eh, luv," he said, "you mustn?t stand so close to the edge."

My mind gasped, coughed, and squeezed out thought. I?d sensed purpose, but not malice. Any number of people had been standing behind me, on a crowded subway platform during morning rush hour. My near-fall?my near-death?had been an accident.

The train stopped, thrumming, and its doors slid open. Poodle-haircut guided me across the gap and placed me in the only empty seat. I craned past the bodies cramming themselves into the car, but couldn?t see the youth with the chip on his shoulder.

The doors closed, sealing me inside. The train jerked and sped away. Odd, how cold I was. I could hardly feel my own fingers clutching the strap of my shoulder bag. The stale air lay heavy in my lungs.

"Thank you," I said to Poodle-haircut, who swayed above me grasping a ceiling knob.

"Yeh," he said diffidently, and turned away.

I looked at the Underground map above the windows. I had to leave the portal at St. Pixie Park. I had an appointment at Wizard?s Hollow.

That push in the back hadn?t been an accident. I must be getting a great reputation?no one had ever tried to kill me before. The pusher might have wanted revenge for some old, successfully completed job, like the Bee Builder scam in Crest Jump or the affair of the Greek Horticulturist and the Halicorn Maze. Or he might have intended to keep me from arriving at Wizard?s Hollow. Hardly fair, to attack me before I even knew what was to be found there.

Already I was a threat to someone, someone who knew about the flowerbed? This promised to be an intriguing predicament.

My mouth and chin set themselves in a thin line that my enemies would have called mulishness, but which I preferred to call tenacity. I sank back into my seat, closing my senses around me like a nautilus retreating into its shell.