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Favorite Gardening Quotations
by Hilda M. Morrill[Note... Some of these may not be specifically gardening related, but appeal to this editor nonetheless....]
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain!
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. I don't think about retiring. I think about how I can keep singing for the rest of my life. It is inconceivable to me that anyone who can travel wouldn't. Don't take yourself too seriously. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Killing dandelions should never be considered a good enough reason to utilize a toxic pesticide. Grandchildren, poems, my garden.... I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling? There is a myth that if you write about gardens you must have a perfect garden.
... And though I garden in my leisure time, I have never considered gardening a leisurely activity.... Gardening isn't for sissies or for legendary fashion mavens. And gardening isn't something you do because you don't have anything else to do....
Plants and flowers of the commonest kind can form a pleasing diary, because nothing which calls back to us the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignificant. Just be careful with whole-hearted planting of the newest cultivars, in case they develop problems down the road as our friend the Bradford did. If we persist, I do not doubt that by age 96 or so we will all have gardens we are pleased with, more or less.
As long as one has a garden, one has a future. As long as one has a future, one is alive. Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything. Plants are the real masters of the earth. I haven't worn any gloves but garden gloves for a long time. Oil allowed us to move off the farm and into the city, where we now eat food that is trucked in from over a thousand miles away. This leads some to ask, "Who will feed us when we run out of gas?"
Looking back doesn't have to be painful. I consider every plant hardy until I have killed it myself...at least three times. Watching the perpetual procession of birds to and from the feeders is one of the joys of the winter season. In plants, the ends of the roots and shoots are always juvenile, always growing, always babies. We've all had our humbling gardening experiences and will continue to have more, which is one of the best parts of the pursuit--there is always a plant about which to learn, a part of the garden to renew, or a technique to master. If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. Everyone needs a mentor.
No Italian garden is complete without a few lemon trees.
You have to allow life to play itself out. Beware of invasive plants. Be advised that good nurseries sometimes sell bad plants.
The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven. Be happy today while you dream of the future. Today may be all we have. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. I must be farmer John ... and nothing more (I hope nothing less) for the rest of my life.
Sometimes some things happen for all the right reasons.
Beautiful foliage alone does not the great tomato make, though. Sigh.
Beautiful nature matters more than beautiful people.
I was born in a lovely white house with a garden. You're giving a part of yourself when you grow a plant and give it to somebody else.
Newcomers are first sent to work in her garden; George Stephanopoulos might still be fertilizing her impatiens but for Bill Clinton's victory in 1992.... So I sing to my seeds. What about it?
Gardening is something you learn by doing - and by making mistakes.... Like cooking, gardening is a constant process of experimentation, repeating the successes and throwing out the failures.... Christopher Walken left the house again without weed-whacking his hair.... I'm no good at cooking or music, but I've always known how to garden. Nobody ever taught me; I just absorbed it. Some families are churchgoers or sports fans. We gardened. Just living is not enough, said the butterfly. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. Quality means doing it right when no one is looking ....
Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts.
Most of us have done something really stupid in our lives ....
If by some chance I woke up tomorrow morning with a crown on my head and a magic wand in my hand .... I would never pay farmers not to farm. Or dairymen not to raise cattle ....
Just because something is natural does not mean it is safer than something synthetic. Just ask Socrates. I'm sure he would have preferred a nice Diet Pepsi, aspartame and all!
What you see when you look at a show poodle is animal topiary - great mounds of fussed-over curly hair shaped into various-size balls around the body.
Then again, if the plant is slow growing, and you are getting older, you may want to start with a larger plant. I find myself buying larger plants each year.
If you rest, you rust.
Nobody seems to think it's a good idea to mention mistakes, but I think it's important to acknowledge the mistakes you've made in life, because it's really through those that you learn things. I've made hundreds....
Gardens will be the peaceful haven we all need.
A gardener's best tool is the knowledge from previous seasons. And it can be recorded in a $2 notebook.
For me, a garden is peace of mind. It immediately takes my mind off the thing I'm puzzling about in my work and gives me repose.
My own attempts to grow this species have been unsuccessful, but on occasion handsome plantings have crossed my path [referring to Rose Daphne (Daphne cneorum)]. No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent; a part of the main.
... My garden is a balancing act between weeds and wonders. Though I started out as a frustrated perfectionist, over the years I've learned how to enjoy my garden rather than feel enslaved by it, thanks to a growing know-how and a change in mindset.
... if one considers Boston's most successful open spaces, they all involve grass. The Common, the Esplanade and the Public Garden are, of course, covered with grass, each acting as an oasis from the steel and concrete around them. Grass is also integrated into Boston's smaller open spaces, such as Copley Square, the Commonwealth Avenue Mall and Post Office Square.
Probably not since Emperor Appius Claudius Caecus began the construction of the Appian Way in 312 B.C. has there been a highway construction as notable as the Central Artery Tunnel Project or as it is known with differing degrees of affection - The Big Dig .... Travelers still use and marvel at the Appian Way 2000 years later. One wonders if this project will have the same lasting value ....
Texture and foliage keep a garden interesting through the season. Flowers are just moments of gratification.
[Weeds are plants that] without profit suck the soil's fertility from wholesome flowers. ... the plants arrive, usually on a day that is either raining or requires one's presence elsewhere, work perhaps. Plant orders do not arrive on sunny, warm Saturday mornings.
It's a guy thing to plant vegetables in your front flower bed, but then again, it's also a guy thing to put them out back in a big rectangle. It's a little radical to put them in front, a statement that you can do whatever you want in your own damn yard.
Salt's a friend to the tomato.
... even the smallest landscape can offer pride of ownership not only to its inhabitants but to its neighbors. The world delights in a garden.... Creating any garden - big or small - is, in the end, all about joy.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
The good Lord is sharing His sunshine with us, and allowed the president to have this [ceremony] in this wonderful, wonderful Rose Garden. These are memories that I'll take with me.
Winter squashes are the forgotten vegetables.... Almost no vegetable is as easy to grow or keep. With fertile soil, full sun and ample water, vines take off. And after plants become established, they're so carefree, it's easy to forget them until fall when their rediscovery makes the harvest that much sweeter.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
As with all new science, genetic manipulation of seed DNA has possibilities for good and for evil. It depends on how it's used and who controls it.
The Mississippi River carries the mud of thirty states and two provinces 2,000 miles south to the delta and deposits 500 million tons of it there every year. The business of the Mississippi, which it will accomplish in time, is methodically to transport all of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.
US House Speaker Tip O'Neill used to say all politics is local, and the same must be said of gardening, where regional climate and soil patterns determine what will thrive and what will die. Besides, gardening is about developing a relationship with where you live, right down to the unique quality of the light, the acid in the rain, the rocks in the soil.
We are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live his life for himself alone.
Deep in the sun-searched growths
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