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

I know the pleasure of pulling up root vegetables. They are solvable mysteries. – Novella Carpenter, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike. – Evelyn Underhill, Letters