There is always a little bit of purslane in Paradise.

There are very few of us who remember the day, the moment, when our childhood ends. For most of us, the sun sets on our innocence gradually, sliding down over the western horizon like a toboggan run down over a long, steep slope. We are never really conscious of the moment we reach the bottom of the slope; we just know that one day we wake up and the toboggan ride is over.

They were walking along a roadway of great slabs of stone set down one after another, the beginning and end of which they could take in at a glance, a road rising from and heading toward nowhere now.
"You can't get there from here," William said, using a Down East accent. "Anymore." Maine, they thought of Maine, then. Evidently this truncated road could still carry them as far away and as long ago as that.

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were--Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.

A garden always has a point.

It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season.