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

I appreciate the misunderstanding I have had with Nature over my perennial border. I think it is a flower garden; she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass, and tries to correct the error. – Sara Stein, My Weeds, 1988

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. – Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871

God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases. – Variation of a saying by Jacques Deval (God loved the birds and invented trees.