The other day I was thinning out some of my gardening books and got seriously sidetracked thumbing through several that recaptured my interest.

While most still ended up discarded — it’s something that has to be done every few years — some ended up with even more pages with turned-down corners and underlined passages.

Not the how-to ditties filled with same old treatises on composting, pruning and important but left-brain “right plant, right place” slog — but the more essay types with philosophical insights gleaned from horticultural failings.

I have my favorite garden essayists, but won’t drop names because in most cases they strike different readers in different ways, and they often don’t “speak” to everyone equally.

But I think it is important from time to time to recognize that gardening is more than a mere place to stuff plants and perform goal-oriented chores that get jobs done. Sometimes it is just piddling around and tickling our senses or indulging in a little fantasy. I mean, only Sisyphus was doomed to eternal toil!

Good rules of thumb: If whatever you are doing leads to some sort of predictably tangible reward, or if you can’t get it done with a cup of coffee in one hand, it’s probably a chore.

Not that serious gardeners don’t have fun, though I suspect many don’t have as good a time as they think or say they do; some are downright miserable company, being so brow-furrowing immersed and focused on tiny details that it’s all they can talk about.

Give me someone who can kick back and, with a wide-open grin and raised eyebrows, say “Woo-hoo!” when something unexpected and not-so-good happens. Who can clap in delight over little nothings, like hearing the first spring peepers, or being the first to notice late-spring lightning bugs.

Who can sit in a porch swing without having to get up and do something, and allow a few clumps of wildflowers in the lawn for winter butterflies and honeybees to visit. Someone who, instead of dragging the dog around the block on its daily walk, lets the pet stop to sniff whatever it is led to sniff (whose walk is it, anyway?). And who can sleep at night without worrying over what the neighbors say about the flamingos or gnomes. Or the bottle tree.

I vow this year to spend more time just thinking and feeling in my garden.

Horticulturist Felder Rushing is a 10th-generation Southern gardener. Contact him at his website: felderrushing.net. His show, “The Gestalt Gardener,” is on Mississippi Public Radio 90.3 FM at 9 a.m. Fridays, rebroadcast at 10 a.m. Saturdays.