Death, forgetting, disappearing are the melancholy melodies wafting through this series. Who can be surprised, in this age of AIDS, surging incidents of breast cancer, the waning of the century? Even the disappearance of a way of being in the world before cyberspace gave time, communication and knowledge dramatic - and terrifying - new meaning.

Is it mere coincidence that the African American novelist, Alice Walker, wrote an essay entitled "In Search of Our Mothes' Gardens?" Walker believes that she became an artist because of her mother's gifts as a gardener. She wrote "My mother adorned with flowers whatever shabby house we were forced to live in. And not just your typical straggly country stand of zinnias, either... (She created a) garden so brilliant with colors, so original in its design, so magnificent with life and creativity, that to this day people drive by our house in Georgia... and ask to stand or walk among my mother's art.¹

Of such a woman Walker wrote, "Perhaps she was herself a poet - though only her daughter's name is signed to the poems that we know."²