Fruit

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.

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.

I had to remember that I was only the referee, the human being who weeded and pinched back and watched everything grow. If I was patient and paid close attention, perennials would let me know where they wanted to be.

There’s one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor’s.

To northern gardeners, this time of year [March] is full of anxious pleasure. Even as they daydream about the botanical pleasures of June and July, ordinary mortals find themselves nearly defeated by the gardening deadlines that pass so swiftly in March. Extraordinary mortals--whose seeds arrived two months ago, whose windows are now full of seedlings, and who are ready to sow peas and carrots the instant the soil thaws--will suffer torments of their own when the perfections they're planning somehow fail to germinate or blossom. A garden is just a way of mapping the strengths and limitations of your personality onto the soil. It would be too much to bear if nature didn't temper a gardener's ambition or laziness with her own unsolicited abundance.

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.

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.

It is one of the peculiarities of garden-making, the greatest of all the arts, that there are no "great" gardens made by welfare recipients …