Perennials that behave like annuals, gone within a year or two. Lettuce that bolts right when you're in the mood for a salad. Deer, hedgehogs, slugs, and bugs. And then, all the know-it-alls who tell you how easy it is. Gardening may be America's most popular leisure activity, but it is also the most frustrating, aggravating, and time-consuming-by no means the simple idyll-with-dirt sold by gardening gurus. As lifelong gardener Abby Adams points out in her tongue-in-cheek book, you can't trust the experts, nothing looks like it does in magazines and catalogs, trends change more often than hemlines, and Mother Nature always wins. Literate, funny, studded with quotes and ironic observations, here is a series of honest takes on dozens of subjects that all gardeners will relate to.