NOTHING like five months of canned peas, white potatoes instead of freshly dug fingerlings, iceberg lettuce and rock-hard tomatoes from the hothouse served up in the Big House to make one pine for the backyard garden again, eh? As a gardener in the Hudson Valley, I have to confess that no garden writing I've read in the last 10 years has touched me as much as something that Martha Stewart said last fall. About to enter the slammer, staring at five months of intimate contact with drug dealers, convicted felons, hardened guards and a miserable cot — what was on her mind? She hoped she'd be released in time to start her spring garden. Gardeners everywhere, rejoice. Ms. Stewart is one of us. And once again among us.

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