July 2005

Fragrant Daylilies

by Kathy Purdy on July 23, 2005

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
May Sarton

How hot was it?

by Kathy Purdy on July 21, 2005

I don't mean to complain about my own garden. It serves me and satisfies me quite well, except at the moments when I get into despair over it: very frequent moments, when I long to have some other sort of garden, quite different; a garden in Spain, a garden in Italy, a garden in Provence, a garden in Scotland.
Vita Sackville-West

The Weather-Resilient Garden

by Kathy Purdy on July 20, 2005

Gardening may well be one of the world's most important fantasies.
Henry Mitchell, in The Essential Earthman

Welcome to my Pity Party

by Kathy Purdy on July 19, 2005

Roses are at their best trailing down in graceful trusses. In fact, they are like supermodels--the goods just look better displayed on tall, thin, limbs.
Marylyn Abbott

The Magic Primrose

by Kathy Purdy on July 16, 2005

It takes exact amounts of rain, light, and heat for buds to open together and result in a few days of rare beauty. It might also, I was startled to realize, take more hours of gardening to create an ideal combination than the number of hours it lasted, but that was of little importance to me. After all, by then I had become a gardener.
Laurie Lisle
Sometimes survival in compost piles has a way of glorifying a plant you thought you hated.
Joe Eck, Wayne Winterrowd in Our Life in Gardens

Where I’ve Been

by Kathy Purdy on July 9, 2005

Now, nobody imagines his modest little patch is going to be the greatest thing since copper bracelets, no. But it will be personal, and it will be fascinating, because there is no such thing as dullness when the gardener is going full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes, as it were.
Henry Mitchell

A Plea for Help

by Kathy Purdy on July 5, 2005

I'm always pleased when the garden is neat and tidy. That's when it looks like a garden. Nature is plants and the complicated ecosystems that support them. But even the most natural of gardens is an unnatural arrangement of plants. We stamp our will upon the landscape, even those of us who prefer to work with nature. And often, like this weekend, nature stamps back. Maybe it's that dramatic tension between artfulness and chaos that keeps us coming back to the garden. Or maybe it's just the flowers and blue skies and finding two little snakes under a rock.
M. Sinclair Stevens

A Good Gardening Day

by Kathy Purdy on July 2, 2005

But gardening is the art of the frustratingly imaginable, of triumph against ridiculous odds, and even rock-gardeners, devoted to the cult and cultivation of the nearly-invisible, must sometimes dream grandiosely.
Brian Bixley, Essays on Gardening in a Cold Climate

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