I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought. – James Douglas, Down Shoe Lane

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils. – Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors

Today I had set aside for spading. Now there is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp. You turn a spade full and then carefully knock all the lumps to pieces and you go on for hours without thinking about anything. – John Steinbeck, letter to Kate Beswick