The history of writers who garden is long because writing and gardening, well, have a way of fertilizing each other.

The list of gardening writers and writing gardeners is long: Nathanial Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Edith Wharton, Michael Pollan, Jamaica Kincaid, and others too numerous to name.

After getting dirty digging a hole or bloody from pruning a rose, I find that it's a relief to spend the next morning writing in my office. And after hours of mental intensity while working on my memoir, it's an exhilarating release to get into the garden.

When a morning of motionlessness overworking my brain is balanced by an afternoon of mental ease and bodily motion, I feel nourished and happily exhausted.

Gardening keeps me writing, and writing keeps me gardening.