Miscellaneous
. . . the full double [peonies], very like dahlias that have gone to heaven and been transformed.
Gardening is the most profound and complex of the arts, operating not just inessentially or marginally through time, but deliberately and consciously. What makes a garden great is the tension between the dimensions, between what is structurally permanent and what is temporarily, immediately, imposed upon that structure.
He who leaves no stone unturned will have a sore back.
...if it weren't for the New York State agricultural exemption, the family farm couldn't exist.
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.
Gardening is never risk free. It's not risk free in your first year and it's not risk free in your 40th. . . .There's always another strange spin on the ball. There's always more to learn.
That's why it's good to have family or old friends. They keep you from becoming a prisoner of your own obsessions. The world is wide, there are other pleasures in it besides gardening, and sometimes we gardeners just need to have that pointed out to us.
Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.
It's Human Nature, or at least a gardener's nature (which is not quite the same thing), to want to live at least one and preferably two climatic zones warmer than where he gardens
It therefore became a storage shed, which simply meant a place to put anything you could not find a place for otherwise.
There may be a fine line between improving garden flowers and making them ugly.
In its own way, frost may be one of the most beautiful things to happen in your garden all year . . . Don't miss it. Like all true beauty, it is fleeting. It will grace your garden for but a short while this morning. . . . For this moment, embrace frost as the beautiful gift that it is.
. . . the full double [peonies], very like dahlias that have gone to heaven and been transformed.
