Blogging Art and Practice

You always carry the memory of your garden in your heart. No matter where on earth you are . . . some mysterious tie will always bind you to your very own patch of soil.

For the uninitiated, the reality of what it takes to create and maintain a great-looking garden appears to be an endless string of tiresome tasks and dirty jobs. But true gardeners know that the real fun of gardening in in the process--the planning, the planting, the nurturing, and the learning.

Time for the weather report. It's cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold. The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young man, or forge it into steel.

Nowhere but at home are the flowers the most colorful and the scents the sweetest.

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.

A garden is a lovely thing
But gardens are not made
By saying "Oh how beautiful"
And sitting in the shade!

She calls herself a 'general gardener' because she grows everything and loves everything that grows.

Speaking of extreme environments, garden-making in Greenland is said by gardeners there to require tamaviaartumik, Greenlandic for passion, ambition, and commitment.

Men with trucks do not see new plantings when reversing or unloading, so trees must wait [to be planted] until all hard landscaping is done.

…the shivery perfection that winter can bring to our gardens.

There is very little in gardening that benefits from being done quickly, and weeding teaches the virtues of pace as well as any activity.

All of longtime gardeners are guilty of experiencing our own irrational, unprovable revelations about what works in the garden.

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before.