the gardening, it is more fitting that you should have the upper hand in the pleasure the two of them enjoy. If you take part in the work, your delight in it will grow, and there will arise in you the desire to reach a goal of noble meaning: to adorn your home with the produce of your own hands and to feed your children by the sweat of your brow. How lovely it is to pull up a lettuce that you planted as a seed, tended as a seedling, and watched over daily. In any case, recourse must be had to your sound judgment in arrangement, layout, and variety; this is your charge and to your credit, for by your nature you have been granted a taste and an artistry indispensable in every circumstance, and above all in this one.
As for the benefits to be harvested from this work, they are too great to be counted, but the chief ones must be classified:
1 - Physical benefits: Sowing seeds in a plot of ground that you have tended through all the operations it requires brings you a beneficial exercise without equal, if you seek an even figure and a graceful form — not to mention the praiseworthy training in breathing in the open air, free of tedium and boredom. Perhaps you have heard of one of Hollywood's stars of gracefulness who practices tearing up paper in the morning and scattering it over the floor of the room, then goes back and gathers it up piece by piece, so as to obtain the very exercise we are speaking of. I hold you far above imitating her.
2 - Mental benefits: When you care for the little garden, it will not escape you that you are dealing with one of the three kingdoms of existence, and the nearest of them to your own kingdom. In planting, growth, and harvest lie the sublime secrets of creation that prompt contemplation and thought. Moreover, this work may spur you to greater curiosity about the phenomena and riddles that rise in your path, whose essence you ought to know. Not to mention that it opens for you a topic of conversation with your gracious lady visitors, from which a rare perfume wafts.
3 - Psychological benefits: It is an established principle in psychology that persistence in one particular task or one fixed method brings despair upon its practitioner, just as too much talk about the politics of the country makes one lose hope of its success. How much more, then, your housework, which you practice daily and perhaps in one unvarying routine. It bequeaths you worry and despondency, and there is no remedy for you but a change of work. Some may advise recourse to the soft bed — and no harm in that after fatigue — but if this remedy is resorted to for cure too long, it becomes a disease that comes back to shatter the personality. Working in the little garden lets your thoughts roam, restores vigor to your heart and radiance to your face, and you find yourself in a fitter state to return to the other household matters with eagerness and strength.
4 - Spiritual benefits: In the little garden you can contemplate God's handiwork and the surpassing skill with which He has prepared for every stage its properties, and the wonders of the process of creation that attend it. The kinship of resemblance between our human life and the life of flowers and herbs will not escape you. And how lovely it is to ponder long over what the seeds suggest.
5 - Conjugal benefits: We shall not leave this subject without mentioning to you something of the most important benefits sought from this temptation. Suppose your husband returned from work or from a journey and saw you pruning the roses, or caressing the jasmine, or watering the violets, your face aflame with red and your eyes sparkling with vigor — in what spirit would he greet you? No doubt you know that best.
Flowers ... the loveliest gift
and the sweetest thing with which to adorn your home ... so order them from:
Idriss Flowers
Beirut — Bab Idriss — Telephone 62-74