"Gardening tutors us in nature's way," writes Michael Pollan in Second Nature: A Gardener's Education. "It fosters an ethic of give-and-take with respect to the land." In this felicitously written book, the author, who is executive editor at Harper's Magazine, focuses on his cultivation of a five-acre garden on his property in Cornwall, Connecticut.

Pollan envies his grandfather's green thumb and sees the humor in his father's flaunting of community standards by refusing to mow his lawn in suburbia. The author discovers his own philosophy about gardening as he battles weeds which he calls "nature's ambulance chasers, carpetbaggers and confidence men." Growing things takes plenty of patience. "Preparing a bed roses," Pollan observes, is "a little like getting the house ready for the arrival of a difficult old lady. Her stay is bound to be an ordeal, and you want to give her as little cause for complaint as possible."

Puttering around in the garden is as good a place as any to learn a new ethic of nature where we can establish an intimate relationship with the good earth and all living things. Second Nature covers the subjects of gardening, nature, and ethics with an impressive style that sheds light on them all.