Our gardens and their maintenance represent a collaborative effort. My husband does the heavy lifting and I do the light stuff. In the fall after the garden pots and planters are emptied of their soil, he hauls them under the deck in the backyard for winter storage.

In the spring, he hauls them back out again to position them variously, then fill them with composted and manure-enriched soil so I can then begin re-planting at the earliest opportunity, exercising my aesthetic wit.

Of course, long before that routine became established he busied himself excavating the soil around the house, then filling the areas with gravel, and finally bricked them up, constructing our small piazzas and walkways, and the stone retaining walls for the front gardens. He cut the 'stone' to fit, using basic tools, a chisel and hammer, and took his time to present us with an garden infrastructure meant to last the vicissitudes of weather and time.

For that matter, he re-built the deck in the backyard when the old one had deteriorated beyond salvage, and he constructed the larger of our two garden sheds where our winter-garden-protection materials are kept, along with the lawn mower and snow thrower and shovels.

For us and our two little dogs, the gardens represent a peaceful and beautiful haven.

Yesterday, when he was out looking around for hardware to replace the lock in our garage door - for we have suddenly found ourselves without keys, due to a misadventure - he noticed that there was a late-season-gardening sale, and brought home to me a shrub rose, three miniature rose bushes, and six clematis vines.

He loves to surprise me and I enjoy being surprised.