It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. – Robert Louis Stevenson

It pleases me to take amateur photographs of my garden, and it pleases my garden to make my photographs look professional. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

By the time one is eighty, it is said, there is no longer a tug of war in the garden with the May flowers hauling like mad against the claims of the other months. All is at last in balance and all is serene. The gardener is usually dead, of course. – Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman, 1981

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