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"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need," Marcus Tullius Cicero reportedly said. Cicero might have made questionable political alliances back in the days of the Roman Empire, but certainly, I wouldn't argue with his wisdom on two of the necessities of life.

Now, to be sure, I will never claim to be gardener myself. In fact, I tend to have anti-garden tendencies, so much so that my family counts keeping a single hanging basket alive past the 4th of July as a victory. Oh, I have Really Good Intentions. I used to spend winter evenings paging through seed catalogs, garden dreaming of spring to come, and never actually ordering a thing. I love to wander the nursery aisles, picking flats of young plants for a garden bed. I so admire my gardening friends- Trish who would take me and my littles on the seasonal garden tour and knowingly tell us every name of every plant; Julie who tells me that she "doesn't have much this year," and still manages a fresh produce and floral bounty the likes I'll never ever see.

Therefore, when my mom, the Ultimate Local Hostess, suggested a visit to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, I was all in. The morning did not disappoint. We arrived at the cusp of change, and so saw the best of both the end of fall and a sneak preview of Christmas. We strolled through the deep gold and oranges and bronzes and greens of fall, the mums and marigolds and sage and cornflowers showing off their November beauty. We followed the Yellow Brick Road through the Pumpkin Village, where every known gourd seemed to be on display,
forming huts and houses and a welcome to the Merry Land of Oz.

But we also fast-forwarded into the holiday season with the 12 Days of Christmas gazebo displays. Each scene depicts a verse from the Christmas carol; animals and costumed figures and lights and music wait at each stop. The sharp-eyed (and it took a few stops before we figured this out) were treated to additional treats- even the weather vanes at the top of the gazebos gave a hint of the verse of the song.

Finally, we toured A Tasteful Place- the edible display garden on the grounds. We spied red peppers and purple eggplants hidden among the leaves. We admired impressive stalks of brussel sprouts. We refrained from snipping off tastes of the freshest of lettuces and perhaps understood just a little better how Peter Rabbit found himself lost among the cabbages.

For a girl who lives most of the time in a dusty place, that often seems more brown than green, a morning in the gardens was blessing, indeed. Perhaps the next stop should be the library...