Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. – Henry David Thoreau
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