crocus
Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment. It bursts upon a man every year . . . as though it had never happened before, but had just been shown by God how to do it, and tried, and found the impossible possible.
Pruning is an art and a science. The rules are simple, but putting them into practice requires skill and judgment. Looking around, I gather that almost everyone leaves the job to an unskilled yardman with years of inexperience.
There is very little in gardening that benefits from being done quickly, and weeding teaches the virtues of pace as well as any activity.
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
The biggest crocuses are also excellent for gardeners who fear they are themselves getting almost too refined to breathe.
Gardening may be the most exasperating occupation under the sun, but it gives as much as it gets--no more no less. Life in a garden is one long war with the powers of Evil, but the victory is worth winning. Maddening catastrophes are followed by spectacular triumphs. One minute you are flat on your face, and the next you are soaring on the wings of the morning.
Gardens are like those extraordinary Faberge eggs made for the czars, revealing surprise after surprise as the season progresses, each week showing some new wonder.
There is of course no such thing as a green thumb. Gardening is a vocation like any other--a calling, if you like, but not a gift from heaven. One acquires the necessary skills and knowledge to do it successfully, or one doesn't.
Optimism overrules pessimism because every spring is an opportunity to start again.
Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.
Fantasy makes all gardens grow. Without it you may have yard, plot, park, grounds, but you lack the essential ingredient of garden, the element that seizes the imagination and transports or envelops you into a world invented by the gardener.
We have to stand still in a garden and listen to its rhythms, look for the signs and symbols and meanings, hear its utterances. We have to look down and up, notice the needles and the haystacks.
The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing better than they have ever done before.
