sonnet time

"That time of year thou mayest in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang,

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day."

- William Shakespeare

quote time

"To everything there is a season..."
- Ecclesiastes 3:1

quote Roses

"The rose laughs at my long-looking, my constantly wondering what a rose means, and who owns the rose, whatever it means."
- Rumi

quote gardening

"When I began to dig and plant, I little knew the joy which would grow out of the soil, and descend from the skies, and gather from far-off places and times to gladden my soul."
- Candace Wheeler

quote a gardener's life

"This I think is a gardener's life. Hope renewed, failures forgotten, knowledge and action wedded, bookish plans and practical applications, winters of study, summers of work, a yearly opportunity to turn our failure into sucess."
- Adelma Grenier Simmons

quote Life

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think,
all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the
friends I want to see." 
- John Burroughs

quote

"A man of knowledge like a rich soil feeds

if not a world of corn, a world of weeds."

- Benjamin Franklin

Time wasted

"It is the time you have wasted for your roses that makes your rose so important."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, from The Little Prince

quote

"We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow."

- Henry Ward Beecher

Flowers

This from the program from our 1996 Herb Symposium:

Lessons in Flowers

Flowers are one of the few non-controversial things in life.
But they are certainly great teachers. They nourish our sensibilities, quicken our wonder over Nature's magnificence and variety.
They prove to us, above all, that there is a power that defies mortal impatience, rebuffs willfulness, induces serenity in a world that is largely aimless bedlam.
The best way to realize this, of course, is to grow them as well as buy them.
Even the posture required is healthily humbling, for most of a gardener's work is done upon his knees; hoping with love and reverence that what he does will be approved by the Master who rules the sun, the earth and air.
If he has faithfully followed His law, the result will be something human lives should resemble: a transitory and fragile existence under the compulsion of time, but leaving an unforgettable perfume, color and form to its successors.

quote

"I play for Seasons; not Eternities!"
said Nature, laughing on her way. "So must
All those whose stake is nothing more than dust!"
And lo, she wins...
- George Meredith

quote

"The ordinary world is already enchanted. The enchanted world is not a fantasy or a hope for the future; it is real, and it is now. What keeps us from seeing the enchanted world - really, now - is the Dead World story we tell ourselves and each other. We soak up this story unconsciously as we grow up. It comes from a narrow, poverty-stricken vision that our world is made only of lifeless matter. This story was invented over the past few centuries in the name of science."

- Jeremy W. Hayward, from Letters to Vanessa

quote

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
- Cicero

quote

"Turn down the noise. Reduce the speed. Be like the somnolent bears, or those other animals that slow down and almost die in the cold season. Let it be the way it is. The magic is there in its power."
- Henry Mitchell

an advanced, civilized society

This was in the e-newsletter from The Old Farmer's Almanac today. (You'd think I'm working for The OFA, for the way I'm talking about it, but, NO. I'm the perennial volunteer. ) Something in this ancient pagan custom spoke to me when I read it. Something along the lines of "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes" or "why don't we open "Temples of Peace" where progressive thinking could be safely contemplated?" What does it say about "civilation", the ancient world, and our own times?

"From the Ruler of new beginnings, and gates and doors, the Roman god Janus gave January its name. He was pictured as two-faced so that one face looked forward into the future while the other took a retrospective view. Janus presided over the temple of peace, where the doors were opened only during wartime. It was a place of safety, where new beginnings and new resolutions could be forged."

quote

"Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer."
- Plutarch, Moralia

This day, this year

"There is no season such delight can bring,
As summer, autumn, winter and the spring."
- William Browne

"I salute you.
I am your friend and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

"No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

"The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach is joy.
There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see, and to see we have only to look. Take joy!

"And so I greet you, with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away."
- Fra Giovanni

"Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time."
- William Cowper

"Look deep into nature, and you will understand everything better."
- Albert Einstein

"One kind word can warm three winter months."
- Japanese Proverb

appropriate for the solstice

"There is a continuity about the garden and an order of succession in the garden year which is deeply pleasing, and in one sense there are no breaks or divisions - seed time flows on to flowering time and harvest time; no sooner is one thing dying than another is coming to life."
- Susan Hill and Rory Stuart



"Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns."
- Charles Feidelson, Jr.