Dedicated educators, struggling with the mandates of "No Child Left Behind" will immediately identify with the hero of this allegory. Horace is a small frog, who has a passion for gardening, and watching flowers bloom. As soon as he comes of age, Horace decides to pursue his great love of nurturing tender blooming things. He studies, diligently, and becomes a professional horticulturist in a public greenhouse. Horace struggles with inadequate funding for public green houses in his neighborhood, and often with administrators, who in turn are controlled by a greenhouse board, who have no experience in horticulture yet are allowed to make major decisions about how the greenhouses, and seedlings should be managed. In spite of it all, Horace soldiers onward, and regardless of what shape the seedlings are in when they come to him, he tries his best to make all the struggling seedlings thrive. In the end, however, the damaged condition of many seedlings, inane greenhouse rules, incessant hectoring of Bullfrog officials, and watching his work undone by plant owners combine to wear Horace down. About this time, the Frog King emerges from the muck on the bottom of his pond and decrees that henceforth, no flower shall wither. Although little additional money follows this decree, new mandates do. Eventually, one "Miracle Plant" emerges, finally comes into bloom, and offers Horace the determination, and encouragement he needs to return to the green house the next year, in spite of the struggles, as he tells himself "Few worthwhile things are easy."