Quotes about Gardening

There's a lot to be said for pottering.  You know Thomas Berry said that gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe?  There are lessons in pottering.

Gardening is its own infuriating design challenge. You fret and you rethink and you second-guess yourself constantly, and then for one delirious, thrilling moment something blooms and you feel utterly triumphant. And then it dies and you are back where you started. You feel like a failure, outwitted by nature. And by rain, or the lack of it. And by that ultimate conspiracy, weeds — endless, unconquerable weeds — like an army in perpetual attack mode. What once seemed a heavenly pursuit now seems beyond hopeless, and therein lies its magic: gardening is the most comprehensively satisfying of design challenges, because when it works you feel like God.

And when it doesn't work, you want to dig a hole in the garden and bury your head in it.

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.

First class of the year, Mrs. Voight [a biology teacher I had in the eighth grade, another dutiful demystifier, inveterate empiricist, and wearer of sensible shoes] announced, in a smug tone of voice striving for the matter-of-fact, that a human being was nothing more than a collection of chemicals that could be had from a biological supply company for approximately four dollars.  Why so cheap?  Because we were 95 percent water, with the rest consisting of relatively common forms of carbon.  I knew that day that, even if Mrs. Voight was right, she wsa not going to teach me anuthing I needed to know.
Everything that lives is 95 percent water.  Genius is 95 percent perspiration, 5 percent inspiration.  Success is 95 percent hard work.  Okay, I get it, but what about that 5 percent?  Tell me watermelon is 99 percent water and you still haven't told me anything interesting - like, what about the 1 percent?  Because chances are that's where you're going to find the watermelon…
I've had occasion to observe something else in good gardeners, a certain touch, an empathy for their plants, a sense of their soil more subtle and complete than any lab report's.  There are things they know I can't find in books.  It's the difference between the well-trained musician and the maestro, the water and the watermelon.  It's that unaccountable 5 percent.

For me, gardening is a form of prayer. Most people have an awareness of life and death, but few have an an awareness of life, death, and life again. Gardeners do though.

Bulbs come up every spring. Then in winter, it looks like there's nothing there, no hope for life ever again. Then, Hallelujah! Next spring they're back even fuller. Perennials - same thing.

Annuals have a slightly different lesson. Annuals really do die, but they broadcast seeds before they go. Where there was only one calendula the year before, there will be ten this year, and one day, they will fill every empty space in your garden. Annuals are a lesson in the difference one living thing, plant or person, can make, and how their presence resonates long after they're gone. There again, the effects are not immediate. There is always the winter. And when you consider the garden as a whole, well, winter is a time to reflect, a time to dream. It gives you time to ask the big questions...

Gardening is an affirmation of divine timing. Some years, in early spring, my enthusiasm takes an ugly turn, and I seemingly believe I can make spring happen earlier than it normally would, if I just work hard enough, if I till enough, compost enough, harden off seedlings earlier than I normally would. In the end, I wind up with twelve flats of dead seedlings. Then I direct seed a couple months later, and with much less effort, everything grows into the full glory it was destined to encompass. To everything there is a season. Amen.

You know what comes next, of course. You know I'm writing this at my desk, on a Thursday, and day after tomorrow I'll put on bib overalls, the neighbors thinking what an affectation, and pull weeds for the composter, and dig a place for a late row of greens, most of them going to seed instead of in the pot, and tell myself what the hell, I just want to dig the dirt and watch the stuff grow, an educated fool at last.

Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind as harrowing and planting those of the earth.