Snail, tiny spiral in calcified membrane;
Inchworm, a hairpin dragon;
Bumblebee, blob of velvet black and yellow,
White butterfly, syncopated burst of gladness;
Naked bulbs, white pubic tentacles in
crumbling soil;
Pears, children of earth and sun.
If you ever doubt life, you need only spend a little time tending a garden. You will see great diversity. Everywhere that you look there will be some dynamic event in progress. Perhaps it’s the way a lotus sprouts up from the rot and mud, or the way that an earthworm dances a writhing passage through the dirt. The smell of moist earth is strangely stirring, the sight of growing trees wonderfully appealing.
No matter how well tended a garden is, there is constant entropy and disorder. That is fine. That is the way it is supposed to be. Our schemes and our aesthetics are imperfect. Our minds cannot comprehend the diversity of nature. Let nature take its variegated course. Variety is vitality.
I am still devoted to the garden, but tho an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
— Thomas Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale, Aug. 20, 1811
“Our bodies are our gardens… our wills are our gardeners.”
— William Shakespeare
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust
“A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.” — James Allen
“I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.” — Bertrand Russell
“Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.”
— May Sarton
“Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe.”
— Thomas Berry
My garden is a source of constant delight for me. My love of native plants leads to one of my other blogs, Native Growers, which at one point I thought about starting a business to connect native plant growers, landscapers, and customers, but never did much with. Now it is more of a news aggregator for native plant news.
The garden keeps me in touch with life, with the seasons, with Tao. I’m constantly finding new surprises in it, and learning more and more about gardening, myself and Tao.
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