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

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

Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything — except itself. – May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep, 1968

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils. – Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors