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.

Every May it happens. I drop to my knees just outside the back door, raise my arms to the sky and shout — That’s it! I give up! Take my flowers beds, you killer weeds! Blackberry vines (藤蔓), this land is yours! Vines climb up and kill my trees one by one! I’m down!

Then I get up, lie down on the swing, and close my eyes. I’m sure I can hear the weeds growing and the vines creeping in. I swear they are ail laughing at me, too. They don’t even have the manners to wait until I leave there.

There is no denying that gardens are battle zones in the spring. I blame it on those April and May rains. Once the heat moves in, I can control what gets watered and survives, but those early showers even out the battlefield.

Garden tools alone make it clear that gardening isn’t an easy thing. My old cart seems to have the personality of a tank, and I’m pretty sure my spade is second cousin to a dagger.

By late June, both sides are worn down. I’ve given some of the yard over to the weeds — you just can’t win them all. That’s a battle for next year. There is no clear victory for me, but I’ve stood my ground for yet another season.

Adults are often embarrassed about asking for aid. It’s an act that can make people feel vulnerable. The moment you ask for directions, you reveal that you are lost. Seeking assistance can feel like you are broadcasting your incompetence.

New research suggests young children don’t seek help in school, even when they need it, for the same reason. It has revealed that youngsters as young as age five care deeply about the way others think about them.

To learn more about how children think about reputation, we asked 576 children, ages four to nine, to predict the behavior of two characters in a story. One of the characters genuinely wanted to be smart, and the other merely wanted to seem smart to others. In the study, we told children that both characters did poorly on a test. We then asked which of these characters would be more likely to raise their hand in front of their class to ask the teacher for help.

The four-year-olds were equally likely to choose either of the two characters as the one who would seek help. But by age seven or eight, children thought that the character who wanted to seem smart would be less likely to ask for assistance. And children’s expectations were truly “reputational” in nature — they were specifically thinking about how the characters would act in front of peers. When assistance could be sought privately (on a computer rather than in person), children thought both characters were equally likely to ask for it.

When children themselves are the ones struggling, it seems quite possible they, too, might avoid seeking out help when others are present, given our findings. Their unwillingness could seriously slow academic progress.

Such reputational barriers likely require reputation-based solutions. Teachers could give children more opportunities to ask help privately by making themselves available to students for one-on-one conversations. Teachers should help students consider asking questions in front of others as normal, positive behavior. Parents could point out how a child’s question kicked off a valuable conversation in which the entire family got to talk and learn together. Adults could praise kids for seeking help. These responses send a strong signal that other people value a willingness to ask for aid and that seeking help is part of a path to success.