mud_season
myrmecochory: seed dispersal by ants.
But a garden is somewhat exalted above ordinary notions of correctness. A garden is more than a matter of the right fish fork, as it were.
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.
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.
There is something about a garden that brings out a fiercely possessive streak in the best of us. All our triumphs, to be really satisfying, must stem from our own individual efforts; and we look with a cold eye upon innovations for which we are not personally responsible. Even a suggestion, however tactfully introduced, is not always taken in good part. . . . We gardeners should not be blamed for this defensive attitude, which is based on the intense interest we take in our work. Without it, gardening would become an undertaking so laborious, so frustrating, so maddening, that there would soon be no gardens at all. As with all truly creative pursuits, the appeal is to the mind and to the heart, rather than to the pocket; and unless we can convince ourselves, beyond any doubt, that the credit is ours, and ours alone, we are like a singer listening to the applause for a song that someone else has sung.
She calls herself a 'general gardener' because she grows everything and loves everything that grows.
To many gardeners, seed catalogues are the most accurate depiction we have of the Garden from which humans were expelled.
Agri-tourism is the last refuge of agriculture
April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
...if it weren't for the New York State agricultural exemption, the family farm couldn't exist.
This is how it should be with gardens and gardeners. They should love what they own, and own what they love; but their gardens must never own them, for there will be no pleasure in them if they do.
The Alexanders of this world who find nations easily conquered should come up against the California annual wild flower seed. It gives you pause: who's the boss? If you need to be boss, stick to nasturtiums and marigolds.
In my part of the country, there comes each year one long and occasionally fruitful season when gardening takes places strictly on paper and in the imagination.
