Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 9:05 pm Post subject: The Garden and the Gardener
"To everything there is a season...a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted."...Proverbs 3
The Glory of the Garden
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
"And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden...You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden."...Rudyard Kipling
Last edited by God's Warrior on Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:39 am; edited 2 times in total
Who loves a garden
Finds within his soul
Life's whole;
He hears the anthem of the soil
While ingrates toil;
And sees beyond his little sphere
The waving fronds of heaven, clear.
A Gardener's Prayer
Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year, 1929
O Lord,
Grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o'clock in the morning, but, you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, heliaanthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought loving plants - I will write their names on a paper if you like - and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not for instance, on spiraea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not to much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew, and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven.
Amen.
The gardener in his old brown hands
Turns over the brown earth,
As if he loves and understands
The flowers before their birth,
The fragile little childish strands
He buries in the earth.
Like pious children one by one
He sets them head by head,
And draws the clothes, when all is done,
Closely about each head,
And leaves his children to sleep on
In the one quiet bed.
There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
Nat Burton, White Cliffs of Dover (song, 1941)
THE GARDEN
Jessie Dingwall
The garden is a special place
Where peace there can be found
And on a lovely sunny day
With scent it will abound
The beauty of the trees and shrubs
Birds singing their sweet song
Blooms of flowers in colorful arrays
Will make your heart with gladness fill
At the wonder that nature can reveal
Here is a perfect place to relax or sit and read
No matter how large or small your garden be
It is the perfect place to be
For beauty is every where to be seen
In a pot or window box or growing in the ground
Put time aside to admire nature's growing power
Even if your garden is wild and overgrown
Cast your eyes over hidden treasures
That lie hiding in the shade
For me my garden is tranquility.
Last edited by God's Warrior on Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:44 am; edited 1 time in total
I'm a gardener and I'm OK
I sleep all night and I plant all day!
I dress in grubby clothing, and hang around with slugs.
Oh I'm happy in the garden
With dirt and plants and bugs . . .
***********************************************
Regardless of your results, remember, whenever you’re in your garden and you experience that perfect bubble of satisfaction that comes from peace, energy, and joy, you’ll know that you’re a gifted gardener and will remain so for as long as you enjoy it.
So, you think you’re an expert! Well, yes, you are. You’re an expert because you have an intimate knowledge of what goes on in your garden. You know what kind of soil you have, you have the shady locations figured out, and you know which areas dry out quickly and what plants grow best there.
You grow magnificent tomatoes, amazing roses, and your zucchinis are the envy of the neighborhood — or maybe not. Sure, you may not know the Latin name for every single one of the 15,000 or so available garden plants, but your back aches just as well as that of any other EXPERT.
************************************************
I know nothing whatever of many aspects of gardening and very little of a great many more.
But I never saw a garden from which I did not learn something
and seldom met a gardener who did not, in one way or another, help me.
Russell Page
I came to love my rows, my beans,
though so many more than I wanted.
They attached me to the earth,
and so I got strength like Antaeus.
but why should I raise them?
Only Heaven knows.
Henry David Thoreau
Who has learned to garden who did not at the same time learn to be patient?
H. L. V. Fletcher
A gardener learns more in the mistakes than in the successes.
Barbara Dodge Borland
Last edited by God's Warrior on Tue Feb 06, 2007 11:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
The fair-weather gardener, who will do nothing except when wind and weather and everything else are favorable, is never a master of his craft. Gardening, above all other crafts, is a matter of faith, grounded, however (if on nothing better), on his experience that somehow or other seasons go on in their right course, and bring their right results. No doubt bad seasons are a trial of his faith; it is grievous to lose the fruits of much labour by a frosty winter or a droughty summer, but, after all, frost and drought are necessities for which, in all his calculations, he must leave an ample margin; but even in the extreme cases, when the margin is past, the gardener's occupation is not gone.
Good gardening and a quiet life seldom go hand in hand.
Christopher Lloyd
I find the love of gardening grows upon me more and more as I grow older.
Maria Edgeworth
Nature soon takes over if the gardener is absent.
Penelope Hobhouse
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), 'The Spectator'
I know why the caged bird sings.
Maya Angelou (1928 - ), Quoting a lyric by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Cranes carry this heavy mystical baggage. They're icons of fidelity and happiness. The Vietnamese believe cranes cart our souls up to heaven on their wings.
Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, The Bad Seed, 1992
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"Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
But they don't get around
Like the dandelions do."...
Slim Acres
The summer's flow'r is to the summer sweet,
other words these houses have not been converted into homes.”
Actress Helen Hayes wrote , “All through the long winter I dream of my garden. On the first warm day of spring I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth, I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.”
I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit.
Reginald Farrer, In a Yorkshire Garden, 1909
Who has learned to garden who did not at the same time learn to be patient? -HLV Fletcher 1949
It occurred to me that agriculture considered as a medium does appear to have an "outside" - that is, gardening. It's true that gardening is not the revolution, nor does gardening turn every gardener into a cultural radical. True, but perhaps in the long run less interesting than the fact that gardening remains prior to and outside agriculture, and the persistence of the garden represents some kind of dialectical negativity in relation to agriculture. [. . . ]But gardening is not just critique. It has a positive side. It actually produces good food and other benefits that exist outside the complex of exchange, or at least somewhat outside. That is, gardening is "praxis". Moreover, it is an art form, an area of creativity as rich and promising as any symbolic activity, and one which can roughly but easily transpire beyond the realm of representation and mediation. It can function as an important part of "every day life" in the radical sense of that term. In short, it occurred to me that perhaps the only possible avant garde is the avant garden. - Peter Lamborn Wilson in Avant Gardening, 1999 Autonomedia
My garden, that skirted the avenue of the Manse, was of precisely the right extent. An hour or two of morning labor was all that it required. But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times of day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of, who had never taken part in the process of creation.
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1846
"I want death to find me planting my cabbages"
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
"There are many tired gardeners but I've seldom met old gardeners. I know many elderly gardeners but the majority are young at heart. Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized. The one absolute of gardeners is faith. Regardless of how bad past gardens have been, every gardener believes that next year's will be better. It is easy to age when there is nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for; gardeners, however, simply refuse to grow up. Thomas Jefferson said once, "Though an old man, I am but a young gardener"."
Allan Armitage
"A well planned garden
bathed in rain and sun.
A faithful laborer...
and the harvest shall come."
Nancy Simms Taylor
"Who loves a garden still
his Eden keeps,
Perennial pleasures plants,
and wholesome harvest reaps."
Amos Bronson Alcott 1868
"To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do."
Charles Dudley Warner, author, editor, publisher (1829 - 1900)
"There's little risk in becoming overly proud of one's garden because gardening by its very nature is humbling. It has a way of keeping you on your knees."...Joanne R. Barwick, in Readers Digest (1993)
"Once we become interested in the progress of the plants in our care, their development becomes a part of the rhythm of our own lives and we are refreshed by it."
Thalassa Cruso
"A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust."...Gertrude Jekyll
"Kind hearts are the garden,
kind thoughts are the roots,
kind words are the blossoms,
kind deeds are the fruit."...John Ruskin
"When gardening I have one gift,
you won't find in manuals.
I know it's strange,
but I can change,
perennials into annuals.".
Unknown author
"How miraculous that growing on my own little plot of land are plants that can turn the dead soil into a hundred flavours as different as horseradish and thyme, smells ranging from stinkhorn to lavender."
John Seymour, b 1914 (English naturalist)
"If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them by hand in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But, they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them weeds and murder them at every opportunity"
Robert Fulgham
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