【推荐2】I remember exactly how I felt when I was listening to instructions on what to do in the water for my first ever whitewater rafting (漂流) trip. It was a mixture of fear and excitement—feelings I usually get before I begin a new adventure. I had been in Costa Rica for three days and one of my goals for the trip was to raft down the beautiful Pacuare River.

I think it is stories like this that lead people to tell me I have an adventurous spirit. But was this experience really adventurous? My tour guide has gone down the river many times, but the excitement was gone and he was just doing his job. Another couple I had met on the trip had been to Costa Rica six times. To them, it was just another trip.

I think a big part of any adventure is in the novelty (新鲜) of the experience. You have to break new ground and experience what you’ve never experienced before. Part of the fun of adventures lies in not knowing what the result will be. That’s not something you get from things you know really well.

The second feature of adventure is fear. Anything adventurous has a little bit of fear in it. That doesn’t necessarily mean overcoming your biggest fears. Just a little fear is all that is needed.

It doesn’t matter if the thing you’re doing has been done before by other people. If it is new to you and something you feel nervous about, it is adventurous. This is why my rafting down the river in Costa Rica was adventurous to me while to my guide, it was just another day on the job.

For me, one of the greatest things about adventure is how it affects me internally (内在地). Before an adventure you only recognize your limits; afterwards you realize that you have no limits. That’s an amazing thing to think about and something I think everyone should experience.

【推荐3】Home gardens produce delicious food. But that’s not their main virtue.

Imagine a plate holding two strawberries, identical in appearance. One comes out of a supermarket box, meaning it is probably harvested when it is still unripe, immediately placed in a forced-air cooling unit and driven hundreds of miles. By the time it reaches the plate, it may have been off the vine for two weeks. The other strawberry is picked from a garden minutes before being eaten. The first one will probably taste sour with a light strawberry flavor. The second is likely to be sweet, and the flavor will remain in the mouth, as the smell will on the hands.

Supermarket strawberries are not entirely without advantages: they are convenient and available almost everywhere. The same could be said of cooking: affordable and decent restaurants around, so why bother to make your own meals?

That attitude misunderstands the final appeal of gardening: it mistakes the product for the purpose.

It is true that a garden, especially in the early years, can bring little but frustration. Inexperienced gardeners may plant the wrong crops for their soil. And even expert gardeners can lose a season’s harvest to uncooperative weather.

No matter.

The real joy of gardening is the time spent doing it. The deepest pleasure—as with cooking, writing, or almost anything worthwhile—is in the work itself. A gardener’s memories center not on the food produced, but on long summer afternoons with hands in the dirt, surrounded by family, if the garden is at home, or enhancing relationships with friends and neighbors in a community garden. To garden is to patiently, lovingly and diligently help life grow, in the ground and above it.