How can I stand on the ground every day and not feel its power? How can I live my life stepping on this stuff and not wonder at it? Science says that an acre of soil produces one horsepower every day. But you could pour gasoline all over the ground forever and never see it sprout maple trees. – William Bryant Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

We spend our lives hurrying away from the real, as though it were deadly to us. “It must be up there somewhere on the horizon,” we think. And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet. – William Bryant Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

Most people who possess anything like an acre, or half of it, contribute weekly to the support of a gentleman known as Jobbing Gardener. You are warned of the danger that he may prove to be Garden Pest no 1. – C.E. Lucas-Phillips, The New Small Garden