Created in the style of a classic garden journal, Cultivating Delight explores the garden as a metaphor for life. Diane Ackerman delights in her garden -- whether she is deadheading flowers or glorying in the profusion of roses, offering sugar water to a hummingbird or studying a slug. She welcomes the drama as well as the sanctuary of nature: She senses loneliness and desire in the spring chirping of male crickets, observes a tiny frog asleep inside the petals of a tulip, and receives imaginary visitors -- from botanical explorers of earlier centuries to naturalist John Muir and garden writer Gertrude Jeckyll.