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

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

Gardens are a form of autobiography. – Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993