1. guilt
1.1. When you do something in the moment you don't realize how guilty you would feel after.
1.1.1. " And these feelings combined in one great impulse toward destruction." (page 4)
1.2. You have to consider what you will feel and what you will get out of it after doing something.
1.2.1. "And then I was sitting in the ruined little garden among the uprooted and ruined flowers, crying and crying, and it was too late to undo what I had done."(page 5)
2. choice
2.1. When you make choices there is always consequences, and pros and cons to the choices you make.
2.1.1. " The witch was no longer a witch but only a broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness and sterility"(page 5)
2.2. There is not always good consequences to your choices.
2.2.1. "I leaped furiously into the mounds of marigolds and pulled madly, trampling and pulling and destroying the perfect yellow blooms."(page 5)
3. maturity
3.1. It is important to be mature as a person.
3.1.1. "The idleness whose prospect had seemed so beautiful during the busy days of spring now had degenerated to an almost desperate effort to fill up the empty midday hours"( page 2)
3.2. When you are childish you don't really know what you're doing.
3.2.1. "The years have taken me worlds away from that time and that place, from the dust and squalor of our lives, and from the bright thing that I destroyed in a blind, childish striking out at God knows what." (page 5)
4. poverty
4.1. People from small poor towns struggle to survive.
4.1.1. "When I think of the hometown of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid"(page 1)
4.2. Not everyone has much money as other people.
4.2.1. "another incongruency of memory—a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust—Miss Lottie’s marigolds."(page 1)