Weather
Gardening at first felt like a natural pleasure, and then it became a necessary one.
Forsythia is a sheer joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia.
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
myrmecochory: seed dispersal by ants.
. . . Whoever it was who said Nature made no mistakes in colour harmony was either colour-blind or a sentimentalist. Nature makes the most hideous mistakes; and it is up to us gardeners to control and correct them.
Intensive gardening, biodynamic bed-building, and every other gardening technique will seriously insult your imagination if you follow every step blindly. Every gardener should experiment and adapt.
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.
Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration.
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.
Roses are at their best trailing down in graceful trusses. In fact, they are like supermodels--the goods just look better displayed on tall, thin, limbs.
He who leaves no stone unturned will have a sore back.
I am very fond of the Spring-flowering colchicums, but unfortunately slugs are also, and those greedy gastropods and I have a race for who can see the flower-buds first. If I win I go out after dark with an acetylene lamp and a hatpin and spear the little army of slugs making for a tea party at the sign of the Colchicum.
In a lot of ways, I'm just hitting my stride, just a little more tired while striding.
